Meet the secret weapon for fi ghting the pandemic: Interior architects

Meet the secret weapon for fighting the pandemic: Interior architects

By Blair Kamin Chicago Tribune

Almost exactly 40 years ago, I got my first job in architecture: Not as an underpaid draftsman for some Pritzker Prize-winning architect or as an editorial assistant at a glossy design magazine, but as a lowly office clerk for an interiors and architecture firm in San Francisco.

One of my duties was to feed drawings into the blueprint machine. Noxious fumes would emanate from the machine, making my nose wrinkle. After copies of the blueprints came out, I would roll them up and deliver them, on foot, to nearby offices. Such was the state of architectural technology, circa 1980.

Yet my grunt work at the firm Whisler-Patri, and a later gig doing public relations for another San Francisco design firm, taught me a lesson that’s taking on fresh relevance as landlords and tenants scramble to remake offices in response to the coronavirus pandemic: Interior architecture matters.

What is interior architecture? In the world of office building design, it means taking blocks of raw interior space and planning the layout and design of everything from corridors and conference rooms to desks and stairs that connect floors. Architects tend to get the credit (or the blame) for building exteriors, but interior architects have enormous influence on whether an office feels capacious or crowded, mind-opening or meanspirited.

Now, COVID-19 has turned their world upside down.

Densely packed clusters of desks, once touted as enhancing opportunities for collaboration, are viewed as potential spots for the virus to spread. The same goes for other common spaces, like conference rooms, kitchens and “bleacher stairs” where office workers gather.

With millions of people working from home and many companies saying that remote work is here to stay, landlords are under intense pressure to retrofit, redesign and re-imagine their office properties. Otherwise, they’re going to lose tenants.

It’s a variation of the theme that has school officials separating desks to promote social-distancing in districts where students are returning for in-person education.

As a result, The Wall Street Journal reported last week, building managers and interior architects are thinking beyond obvious safety measures like plexiglass shields and social distancing circles stuck on the floor.

With coronavirus concerns putting a premium on the touchless experience, security turnstiles may be programmed to automatically direct elevators to an office worker’s floor. Companies may stagger work hours, ensuring that office floors are less than half full. As the Tribune’s Ryan Ori has revealed, air-handling equipment is being modified to kill germs that spread the virus.

On the design side, companies with big interior architecture practices, like San Francisco-based Gensler, which has a large office in Chicago, are sketching flexible solutions that could work during and after the pandemic. One example: workstation clusters that can be reconfigured so people don’t face each other, lessening the possibility that an uncovered cough will spread germs.

In the future, experts speculate, office workers may do individual “focused” tasks at home while offices become flexible spaces mainly used for meetings. Such a move could dramatically lessen overall office building demand, hurting property

values and landlords’ bottom lines. But at this point, absent a vaccine that could eliminate the coronavirus threat, no one really knows what the office of the future is going to look like.

What is clear is that minor design changes are sure to greet you if and when you return to the office. More broadly, there is likely to be a new emphasis onhealth and wellness, just as a new emphasis on security followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Interior architects will be the ones shaping these changes. And their work won’t just be a matter of dollars and cents. It could be the difference between life and death.