Introducing an Illustrated Series: Architecture and Cities Post-virus

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Yesterday, on the 20th of April, we passed the cap of 111 days of the pandemic. During this time, we’ve been busy fighting in supermarket aisles over toilet paper in Australia, lining up for marijuana purchases in Amsterdam and boosting gun demand in the USA. We are conscious none of those will help in fighting the virus, but we do it, nonetheless. Beyond the bizarre human psyche, this pandemic unveils interesting trends that will, whether we like it or not, impact on Architecture and Cities. 

Sitting from our home, in forced confinement, while entertaining our daily ZOOM meetings, we suddenly realise we need to review all our ongoing and future projects. The problem? The pandemic has brought everything to a standstill and raising a number of uncertainties for the real estate sector. Investors are turning to other portfolios with high risk but short-termed gains, developers are freezing projects and reviewing market demand post-virus, and consumers are facing unemployment rendering inability to commit to hefty and long-term property loans. So, how to design in this context? In an environment where we do not know the endpoint, where the future economic impacts are still unknown, and where every week we are introduced with other uncertainties. Demand is changing. There is no way around this.

While some design practices specialising with luxury products may survive with minimal renovations, many will have to adapt and reinvent themselves, as the world braces for an incoming recession; which the IMF warns may be the worst since the ‘great recession’. Actually, there was nothing ‘great’ about it, as it brought with it increasing inequality, rendering a shift in market demands. Just like it did in the past, our industry will be severely impacted, and this means most design firms as the majority of us dwell in producing affordable products to match demands representing 99% of the market. A market that usually retains very little attention due to their low-cost aspects and less glamourous sides. However, with future affordability being questioned, how do we serve this target group?

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Cite: Zaheer Allam, Gaetan Siew and Felix Fokoua. "Introducing an Illustrated Series: Architecture and Cities Post-virus" 21 Apr 2020. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/937928/introducing-an-illustrated-series-architecture-and-cities-post-virus> ISSN 0719-8884

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