21. Learning from the Post-Covid-19 Pandemic Experiences

The COVID-19 pandemic marked a threshold in everyone’s life, consequently generating new spatial paradigms in architectural and urban sphere thinking. Especially, the relationship between man and space became a major subject of interrogation. The pandemic context required distant communication, remote working and learning, and isolation. Considering the possibility that similar pandemics might repeat the process revealed naturally certain lessons from which we must learn. First, it revealed the role of public spaces as a very important spatial quality that became quintessential in such a context. As such, their design and reconceptualization, especially in spatial terms, need to be reconsidered. Especially in mass and multi-family housing developments, their presence quantitatively and qualitatively needs to be increased. Interestingly, the remote working and teaching processes were also tested during the pandemic, and we learned that, apart from the limitations in terms of quality, there is a lot of potential in the distance working and learning process, not only in professional aspects but also in pedagogical aspects. Although it pushes towards more virtual reality, the pandemic worked as a “live” experience to understand the potential and extent of digital technologies in making such a reality possible. Last but not least, the lesson was related to the personalization of space through isolation for pandemic spread prevention reasons. Also, in this aspect several experimental designs were proposed; however, the nature of this operation on its own is featured by ontological limitations. Finally, it can be said that these lessons should rapidly be reflected in architectural and design pedagogical processes aiming to train the next generation of architects/urban planners. Also, the reflections should be implemented in the curricula and courses of these programmes, in order to avoid similar situations with adequate architectural solutions.