The Covid Companion

THE COVID COMPANION

THE FORGE CRAFT ARCHITECTURE + DESIGN FIELD GUIDE TO

LIFE POST-COVID

THE COVID COMPANION A FIELD GUIDE TO LIFE POST-COVID The COVID-19 pandemic sent shockwaves rippling across the globe causing widespread sickness and death. It introduced the Western world to physical distancing, caused painful social isolation, shuttered entire industries, depressed global markets, and forced us to completely rethink how we live in the world.

Emerging technologies, new business models, and evolving social patterns constantly inform each other symbiotically. More and more, people need technology to interact, to perform daily functions, to be entertained - this was the case even before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since then, many aspects of our lives have slowed down. Social circles have tightened and become more insular. Personal contact and communication are now more highly prized than ever.

While we all wish for a return to “normal,” life Post-COVID-19 will not be normal in the ways to which we have been accustomed. As we envision boldly stepping back into the PO-CO world -- hopefully sooner than later -- we endeavor to tread confidently but also safely into a new public realm. These PO-CO places will be reconfigured and reconstituted to promote socially responsible consumerism, where working, living and playing do not pose inherent health risks to yourself or others.

This field guide explores how we as a society can balance doing the things we love to do when we’re in public with the safety we enjoy when we’re in private. While many public activities will continue to be restricted, we have an unprecedented opportunity to enlist novel design solutions to combat a novel disease and in the process promote smart strategies in health, safety, privacy and common practice.

We can recharge many industries and allow them, reinvented and revitalized, to find success and even flourish in the new PO-CO world.

CENTRAL THEMES Future of Touch: Everything in Public is Touchless; in Private, Bronze is the new Gold Future Daily Life: Eat, Drink, Shop, Live HYPER-LOCAL Future of Streets / Transportation: Roads serve people, not just cars. One-way traffic. Bring-Your-Own-Handlebars Future of Quarantine: Neighborhood-level lockdown allows hyper-local daily activities to continue Future of Neighborhoods: Neighborhood retail allowed by right, Ice-cream-man-style mobile vendors Future of Housing: Stoops, community gardens, package storage, dedicated WFH space Future of Office: Commercial Real Estate is dead, Work-From-Home (WFH) is standard, WeWork pivots to WeMeet Future of Healthcare: mobile hospitals, telehealth, hybrid care, publicare (public healthcare) Future of University Education: Greater emphasis on online education, privacy means health & safety on campus Future of Retail: Online, Mobile Boutiques, Personal Shoppers, by Appointment Only Future of Dining: To-Go, Satellite Kitchens, Patios, Private Dining Rooms (PDR) Future of Daycare: Nannies, housekeepers, multi-generational nuclear family Future of Hospitality: Luxury vs Commodity, Cloth as ultimate luxury, sterile as safe

TOUCH In public places, the required standard of hygiene will be highly enforced.

More than ever, Health & Safety Divisions of local jurisdictions will be able to shutter non-compliant businesses. Customer touch points and physical points of interaction, now considered to be barriers to accessibility in public spaces, will be limited or completely removed.

In private spaces, where standards of hygiene are less enforceable, touch is inevitable but sanitization remains a top priority. The anti-microbial properties of copper and its alloys -- brass, bronze, nickel-plating -- are once again highly prized. In a return to traditional common practice, copper-based fixtures will become the gold standard for door handles, plumbing hardware, cabinet pulls, etc.

Standard social greetings such as kissing on the cheek, bro-hugs, and the one-arm side hug will all likely be replaced by their PO-CO equivalents of the Wuhan shake and the Iranian butt bump. The elbow bump, which is only possible to exchange from a much closer distance than even a handshake, is not viable as a social-distance-compliant greeting.

DAILY LIFE Pandemic quarantine has forced us to live in a way that is HYPER-LOCAL. Forced slowness and deliberation of movement has restored a sense of quietude and self-reliance -- old (even ancient) life concepts that in today’s world feel radical and pioneering. Unlike the “little house on the prairie,” today we have the benefits of technology to keep us connected. We have robust infrastructure for the distribution of goods that keep us fed & pampered.

Now that we have somehow found slowness amidst all this panic, maybe we will find it worth holding on to, that maybe it was something missing from our lives all along. Perhaps it’s helping us to cope in more ways than we realize.

The streets are quiet, except for people, who are out in droves. Birds are returning. People in cities can see sky instead of smog. Neighbors are catching up more often, even meeting each other for the first time after years of sharing a fenceline. In some ways, 6 feet brings us closer.

This pandemic has shown us just what essential services look like. While neighborhoods across America are equipped with these services to varying degrees, neglecting to provide them to a given neighborhood effectively deems that group of people unessential. As life becomes more hyper-local, these essential services should be considered prerequisites to habitation, like electricity and water. PO-CO zoning laws should therefore reflect the urgent necessity of essential services in all neighborhoods ... everywhere.

STREETS + TRANSPORTATION Single-direction travel is now perceived as an indicator of safe travel in public spaces. Linear parks have proven safer in times of a pandemic while neighborhood and pocket parks have had to close when residents find themselves unable to travel more than a mile from their homes. Even more critical in times of health crisis is the need to stay healthy and connected to nature. These linear parks and trails have provided us a safe environment in which to fulfill our most basic biophilic needs, fresh air and natural light, and freedom of movement.

As vehicular trips have drastically dropped in the wake of the work- and study-from-home culture, public right-of-way will increasingly be dedicated to pedestrians, bikers, and landscape and with financial support having been reappropriated from current and future bond money. These pedestrian spaces promote health and safety on the roads and in neighborhoods where sidewalks are either non-existent or too narrow to be shared and hold the promise for proper handicapped accessibility Critical future investment in central neighborhood transit corridors will include tree-lined vegetated buffers for protected one-way exercise lanes and vehicular reduced-traffic lanes. As the 9-5 commute becomes relegated to the past, contra-flow measures do not effectively apply to the service workers who continue to use such roads. Public transit options will increase accordingly for these commuters as roadways become slower. Many neighborhood transit corridors will transition to pedestrian, human-powered vehicles and socially-safe public-transit vehicular traffic only.

Due to COVID-19, the scooter- and bike-shares that had taken the cities by storm and made such a hit, went out just as fast as they came in. But the benefits those modes of transportation provided for last-mile travel don’t have to be lost with the advent of removable/collapsible clip-in handlebars. Riders will purchase a set of handlebars that can be easily stored in a backpack or purse that clip into the post of a scooter or bike. Everything else will work the same in terms of using the app and scanning to ride, but with BYOHandlebars, riders won’t have to touch any surfaces of the vehicle except with the bottom of their shoes which doesn’t pose much of a risk.

Over time, primary roadways will transition to one-way traffic only in overlapping transit loops, which functions ideally for public transit, promotes the safety and clarity of pedestrian traffic, and easily accommodates multiple transit modes within existing ROW restrictions.

QUARANTINE In future outbreaks, neighborhood-level lockdowns or “shelter-inneighborhood� mandates will allow for effective containment of infectious spread, while still allowing many essential neighborhood activities to continue, such as students attending school, patronage of hyper-local businesses, conducting self-care and undisrupted service activities.

The Hyper-Local neighborhood will continue largely unfettered at its normal pace. The schools / shops / restaurants / grocery / salon / etc. will continue to operate within their neighborhoods under social distancing guidelines, but people who are not residents of the neighborhood will not be allowed to use those facilities during a shelter-in-neighborhood lockdown. This limits exposure between disparate quarantine groups and serves to contain potential geographic spread of the contagion.

Neighborhoods will be assigned QR (Quarantine Region) Codes, which patrons will scan upon entry to neighborhood establishments during such periods of restricted movement. Politicians will enact complicated districting provisions to ensure their suburban strongholds will have access to HEB / Central Market and Whole Foods Market.

MULTI-FAMILY HOUSING Home quarantine is particularly lonely for those who live alone. There is a much higher risk of the negative mental effects of isolation in multi-family housing. Public interaction between neighbors is even further restricted due to social distancing measures.

Successful future multi-family housing will provide semi-private spaces to allow for safely distanced social interaction. Stoops or porches in front of unit doors designate a semi-private zone for the tenant while allowing a properly scaled public-interaction zone with others. These spaces benefit greatly from natural light and vegetation in a courtyard building typology with carefully controlled exterior circulation.

It is important to strike a balance between safe and interactive space that enables the benefits of regular conversation and continued cultivation of relationships. Staggered unit entries, widened corridor space at door locations, wider and deeper door drops, and adequate distance between unit doors promote casual conversation between neighbors at a safe distance.

These semi-private transitional spaces are well appointed with outdoor furniture and landscaping that can both beautify and also screen.

Larger communal spaces in the building complex will encourage safe social activities like community gardening plots, dimensioned and detailed in accordance with social-distancing standards. The Texas Parking Donut will also become a thing of the past, as introducing natural light into the heart of the building is prioritized over maximizing parking capacity.

SINGLE-FAMILY HOUSING The more self-sufficient a home, the better it fares during a lockdown. Many daily public services and amenities will be moved into the PO-CO home.

In new construction, there will be dedicated home office spaces, spaces for home-schooling, family member isolation, exercise, secure delivery drops, larger mud/laundry rooms, increased pantry and storage spaces, and outdoor spaces for sustainable family gardens, where one can readily access fresh air and natural daylignt.

We will also see a trend away from open floor plans. When the new norm is to spend all day at home with your family, some separation and privacy within the home becomes more important. Historic typologies such as courtyard homes will emerge with “gradients of intimacy” built around central public areas, with a more private “outer ring” consisting of bedrooms and office/ flexspaces where family members can isolate or take a conference call.

Front porches that allow the family to engage with the activity on the street and have some safe interaction with neighbors will be an essential feature.

The foot of the driveway will become the new PO-CO front porch.

INTERIOR DWELLING Everyone is spending much more time at home. Regardless of whether you live in a house or apartment, rent or own, the necessities of life within your residential space are changing in fundamental ways. The home, the most private of realms, remains the most important construct in every person’s life, and our investment in the comforts it affords will only increase over time.

We will see increases in amenities that make working from and sheltering at home the easy choice. Secure package and food delivery drops will be in a dedicated “safe-zone” at every unit door. Secure package storage systems in larger apartment complexes will be completely touchless.

Dedicated Work-from-Home space will become a critical aspect of maintaining life-work balance. DIYers and renovation designers will retro-fit portions of the home, away from non-work functions, with dedicated work space in a compact, efficient manner, finally reclaiming the dining table as a place where the family unit can congregate and enjoy each others’ presence during meals.

INSTITUTIONAL HOUSING Institutional housing facilities such as nursing homes, prisons, and homeless shelters have been hotbeds for the spread of the coronavirus, and will require significantly increased regulation and oversight in the future to keep residents safe. These populations are vulnerable and have restricted autonomy, generally living in close quarters. Design interventions can help guardians better ensure the residents’ safety. For instance, converting all doors and fixtures to be touchless, designing building layouts with one-way corridors, and having dedicated meal drop spaces and personal eating space set aside in the event of a lock-down so residents don’t have to leave their rooms.

Nursing homes especially, where in times of quarantine visitors are generally prohibited, should be equipped with the technology that allows each individual room to have easy and frequent communication with outside family and friends. Additionally, therapeutic robot animals will become more popular, with “carebots” such as the PARO Therapeutic Robot, a robotic plushy seal used to treat patients in institutional care, where live animals or visitors pose logistical or health risks to the patient or vice-versa.

OFFICE The 9-to-5 40 hour work week will become obsolete for white collar work.

A significant amount (if not all) work will evolve into work-from-home and going into the office will occur on a semi-weekly or bi-weekly basis for team meetings and collaborative projects. As a result, homes will need to be equipped with dedicated office space and high-quality internet.

WeWork, the vanguard of office design trends, will respond to the changing reality of the work environment and quickly pivot to WeMeet, a concept premised on typical remote-structured office staff that intermittently holds only essential meetings in person (office-wide, project teams, client presentations, staff work sessions, etc.) The shared conference rooms at WeMeet are continuously sanitized to public health and safety standards before and after each meeting to ensure the safety of present and future attendees.

For those people who do return to a normal office arrangement, the office of the future will look much different. Companies will require less space on a daily basis, as the lion’s share of work shifts into home work space. Multiple companies will opt into a single-space lease, similar to a time-share agreement.

These environments will be thoroughly cleaned including UV treatment and sanitization on a daily basis as required for public gathering space.

HEALTHCARE Hospital Care: The most critical piece of infrastructure in the face of pandemic has of course been our centralized hospital system. Supporting the recovery of patients and the safety of front-line workers who are risking their lives for the sake of our future deserve the best care & protections available.

As many hospitals were quickly overwhelmed with an influx of COVID-19 patients, hundreds of temporary hospitals were constructed and deployed worldwide in a wide variety of project delivery methods, including sitebuilt, modular-built, and re-purposing existing structures both large and small. Common treatment standards for these facilities included rapid deployment, single-patient isolation, frequent sanitization, high-volume fresh air and exhaust with zero-air re-circulation, and invasive assisted breathing equipment such as ventilators and ad hoc positive-pressure breathing apparatus modified to serve as ventilators.

In future pandemics, these temporary hospitals will need to be once more deployed to combat infection and contain the contaigon. Health officials predict that subsequent mutations of the virus will be much worse than the first, as was the case with Spanish Influenza (H1N1) resurgence in the fall of 1918. Planning for this inevitability by increasing our emergency treatment stockpile will keep the world from getting caught flat-footed ... again.

Alternative Care: The healthcare landscape is undergoing dramatic change, precipitated by the ever-rising costs of coverage, the inflexibility of the physician reimbursement system, and the proliferation of technology. Healthcare providers predict the one-size-fits-all model of healthcare will soon give way to a more flexible payment reimbursement structure that allows patients to request new methods of care delivery that better suit their needs and budget.

Tele-health, or the use of online tools or video-conference with a physician or other healthcare professional, is growing rapidly popular. This trend which will continue to accelerate as the physician’s waiting room is increasingly perceived as a breeding ground for disease. Hybrid-care patient treatment methods can include group treatment sessions, where patients can discuss their symptoms with each other. Patients report feeling empowered by the group treatment experience. Also, mental health will bear a more vital role in the health treatment spectrum, as unemployment and physical isolation under quarantine take their toll as a potential “second pandemic” in itself.

As economic models shift in the PO-CO world, and governments are required to put entire industries on life support for the foreseeable future, public healthcare seems a more likely inevitability. Under an employer-based healthcare system, with huge swaths of the population unemployed and a pandemic sweeping the nation, the success of that patient care model is certainly not viable. It was built to essentially implode in times of pandemic.

UNIVERSITY COVID-19 will test the foundational fabric of the college experience. Online education will be elevated to an equal position as in-person education. Many legendary rites of passage in the college experience -- for better or worse -- will be cast aside in order to focus on education over experience in the shadow of uncertain times.

Higher education institutions will need the resources to pivot to online courses on short notice in the event of a lock-down. Some in-person group activities with limited group sizes may allow for some human contact and normal social interaction, but at a manageable scale and with social-distancing mandates in order to reduce the risk to the greater student body.

Studying abroad, the most culturally enlightening experience university student can have, will be greatly challenged as national borders tighten due to safety concerns. However, domestic-exchange programs -- from Austin to Seattle for example -- will allow for alternate cultural experiences but without need of a passport, or worrying about being stranded in a foreign country during an international pandemic crisis.

On-campus and off-campus student housing will also have to make major changes. Say goodbye to bunk beds, group fitness, locker room and shower facilities, and close-contact assembly spaces. The need for safe living conditions during extended quarantine periods will perforce individual student rooms, outfitted with all the essentials for independent living, so that students can simply focus on learning and worry less about their own safety.

LIBRARIES Libraries were once primarily a place to study and borrow books, but with the rise of the internet and digital content, those services have become less essential. They have taken on a new role as community centers providing services like internet and computer access, job counseling, food pantry programs, after school programs for children, homeless shelters in times of crisis, and making an effort to fill any underserved need of the local community.

In the PO-CO world where there is a new emphasis on hyper-local community, residents will need a tangible community center as a source of information on neighborhood activity and a safe place to commune as necessary. Libraries are perfectly situated to serve that purpose, as a physical and digital town crier, bulletin board or safe meeting hall.

In the PO-CO library, meetings, group lessons or classes, gardening and community art projects can still occur at a safe physical distance. The number of attendees allowed per session will lessen, or the rooms themselves will get larger or be held outdoors, but the functions libraries perform will become even more vital as neighborhood activity networks deepen and strengthen.

As most of us only to to our local library to vote, and even as the act of voting itself becomes more challenging, it is essential that people continue to feel safe going to their polling place. This underscores the role of the library as an extension of municipal government and as such, it is often under-utilized.

During pandemic, its multi-functionality makes it a community stronghold.

RETAIL While essential services should be allowed by right in neighborhoods, what about non-essential businesses who are still highly desirable, like retail? These businesses will need to evolve.

Online: Online already dominates the retail landscape, and many mom-and-pop businesses go under each year given the convenience of ordering from the couch. Coupled with the public’s understandably growing aversion to trying on clothes in public dressing rooms, technology will rule the future of retail.

1995’s “Clueless”, fittingly, offers us clues to the future of online fittings.

Affordable personal 3D full body scanning is becoming readily available to the average consumer. Pairing one’s digital measurements and body type with online retailers benefits the shopper with pre-selected sizes and fashion tailored to their personal tastes and physical paramenters, forever eliminating the online sizing guessing game. With this scanned data, apps will visualize every article of clothing and accessory on your own personal image in 3D renderings. Bid farewell to body shaming inherent in the fashion industry. In the PO-CO world, the only body that matters is your own.

Personal Shoppers / by Appointment Only: Retail districts in the future will restrict access, by appointment, to those who have registered ahead of time online. Such preparedness grants unrestricted access to a portion of the district for a certain window of time. This planning measure limits crowd sizes and provides quality in-store customer service, where personal retail interactions are reserved at a premium.

The Personal Shopper Upgrade tailors the customer’s browsing preferences to their shopping experience, providing ready-made selections upon entry to their favorite boutiques. This frees up ample time for spontaneous window shopping before the reservation window time slot expires.

Mobile Boutiques: Boutique retail in the new marketplace will need a robust online ordering / shipping infrastructure in place, and many will need to go mobile to serve their customer base. Brick-and-mortar retail will suffer, and many flagships will close as online mobility grows.

Like the friendly neighborhood ice cream man from our youth, the future mobile boutiques will broadcast their pending presence in your neighborhood by putting out a geo-boundary crossing notification minutes in advance. It also notifies subscribers of their location and duration of stay and suggests appointment booking slots to ensure limited staff are available to service customers in the limited time window. Online pick-up orders will be prioritized.

DINING Dining out will become more of a special occasion activity for large groups.

The competitive restaurant arena will adapt its business model in myriad ways.

Meanwhile, stay-at-home “fine-dining in” becomes a new national pastime.

To-Go - Going Out, Eating In: “Dining in” will become the easiest and most popular alternative to cooking at home. This also enables restaurants to rely more heavily on their most essential feature, their kitchens. When people want to feel like they are “going out but eating in” for dinner they will walk or drive to their favorite neighborhood restaurant for pickup and take the food & drinks back home to enjoy. This saves money on delivery fees and allows some face-to-face interation with owners and staff of local businesses, but in new, safer ways.

Satellite Kitchens – Fast Food from the Couch: These kitchens have become more prevalent since the explosion in popularity of third-party restaurant delivery services in urban areas. Rather than send a driver to multiple eat-in restaurants to pick up food for one online order, satellite kitchens can service the same delivery order much more efficiently when located under the same roof. This market sector will continue to grow rapidly in popularity for the “fast food from the couch” dining crowd.

Private Dining Rooms - Public setting, Private experience: With the advent of physical distancing, packing the seats in an open-seating arrangement is no longer a viable option, and customers are wary of sharing air space with strangers. As a result, Private Dining Rooms offer the privacy of your own room with a separate ventilation system. Each room is thoroughly cleaned and sanitized between every meal. Due to the smaller group size and private nature of room, once inside, use of PPE and social distancing rules can be less restrictive. These rooms are the perfect setting for a group dinner.

Patios – Safety in the Outdoors: Open-air patios will also offer a measure of comfort for the health- and safetyconscious diner. Increased natural ventilation in a carefully designed setting will allow a conscientious mitigation of social distancing and sanitation measures, both real and perceived. Consequently, restaurants will expand their patios to take over portions of their parking lot, and parking on-site will be fully dedicated to curbside pick-up and delivery drivers only.

DAYCARE Group daycare facilities are notorious as a petri dish for infection, especially the common flu and cold. While such exposure helps our population to develop herd immunity, parents in the PO-CO world will be more vigilant in reducing their children’s contact with potential virulents. Sick children will continue to expose their parents to sickness and in multi-generational households, their grandparents, who fall into a particularly vulnerable demographic.

Families that are able to do so will fortify the core of their nuclear family, thereby sequestering older generations from the exposure that has run rampant in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. This places the onus of populational quarantine on the most fundamental societal unit, the household.

With work-from-home evolving into a societal norm in the PO-CO world, parents will also bear the added responsibilty of care, education and entertainment of their children, all in the same place. Bringing grandparents, other family members and select friends back into the nuclear core represents in part a throwback but also a re-invention of the family culture we saw in post-WorldWar America. In response to the conflation of life’s responsibilities into the single-family home, the extended family members’ contribution to “help with the kids” suggests that such home life could be ultimately enriching while also serving to shelter more people in place.

MOVIES Americans love going to the movies and in the PO-CO future this will be a combination of new and old modes of engagement.

Streaming: By far the most popular way to watch a new movie in the future, licensing laws for movies just released to theater will evolve to include home theater licensing, where people at home purchase screening rights in a pay-per-view agreement. This is already happening where first-run features are priced accordingly in on-demand venues.

Drive-Ins: A retro retread, what safer way to watch a film on the “biggest screen� than from the safety of your own car? Drive-ins will experience a huge resurgence as enclosed open-seating theatres are deemed a risk to public safety.

Dinner and a Movie: A novel concept will arise to supplant open seating in local film houses based on new physical distancing standards: the Private Screening Room.

Innovative entertainment venues will re-configure their existing movie theater infrastructure into a more intimate, karaoke- or home-theatre-style viewing experience, coupled with food and drink service, and rentable for the evening or by the hour. Each private room is sanitized before and after each viewing, with isolated air supply and exhaust, and reduced PPE and social distancing requirements commensurate with group size. The result is an immersive, enhanced experience that feels private, safe, and extremely comfortable.

HOSPITALITY With the hospitality industry suffering due to widespread health and safety concerns associated with travel, hotel, motel and AirBNB hospitality models will have to drastically shift to extremes to cope with stricter regulations.

The surface features of hospitality spaces will take on greater meaning beyond serving as signifiers of level of luxury sonce these are the point of contact for all guests. What does the sheet thread count matter if they can’t be verified to have been properly sanitized from prior use? Level of hygiene will be the standard and materials that best respond to acceptable standards of sanitation will set the bar.

The cost of sanitation prep -- maybe to the extreme that every new guest gets a fresh set of sheets and towels that are theirs to keep -- and commensurate hospitality materials will be reflected in the hotel rate. Consequently, most hotels will by default become high-end luxury and thus be largely unattainable to the common traveler. Only luxury-strata hotels have the staff and resources to provide the required balance of sanitation, service and aesthetics that its clientele can afford. In-hotel restaurants will be drastically reduced or dining options will be room service only.

Due to reduced demand and increased safety precautions, many hotel staff will be relocated and housed on-site in sequestered, restricted-access areas of the hotel itself. As many of the rooms will sit vacant per social distancing mandates, this provides an affordable housing option for the Service Class.

Once the addition and deletion of services reaches PO-CO equilibrium, hotels will become either a 10-star or 1-star option.

In the PO-CO era, the old motel stock, rendered obsolete and in non-compliance with forthcoming sanitation standards, will largely be demolished. Fewer new ones will be constructed with a built-in upscaling of health features to close the gap in luxury and safety with comparatively higher-end hotels.

The new motel room will be booked on an app on your phone, which sends you an address, motel room number, and secure QR barcodes for access into the room for keyless, touchless entry. Guests will be asked to provide their own bedding, pillow, air mattress / cot, etc. for their stay, and to take everything with them when they leave. Motel rooms will not typically have a separate room for toilet or shower to reduce the number of surfaces to clean.

All surfaces in motel rooms are impervious, anti-microbial and are thoroughly cleaned before and after each use by automated sanitization robots.

These motel facilities will be considered self-serve and automated. Support staff will be available to assist in the case of an emergency. The motel concept will be considered more of roadside service, less a hospitality experience. The sterility and spartan accommodations of the motel environment make the commodity experience feel safe and at a reasonable, utilitarian cost.

AIRLINES Commercial airlines have been marooned by drastically reduced passenger travel, and restricted seating arrangements due to social distancing. At the same time, shipping freight revenue has resultingly increased exponentially.

The United States Postal Service was leasing space on 60% of commercial flights in the United States each day, as of January 2020. At that time that shipping freight constituted 5-10% of all commercial airline revenue.

In the social distancing era, the dynamic will drastically change. Airlines which used to pack passengers like sardines will now require social distancing: some guidelines maintain that planes will require 1 in 7 seats maximum to be occupied, in order to be compliant. This is catastrophic news for the airline industry. Coupled with the public’s continued aversion to avoiding enclosed shared spaces for any duration of time, airlines will pivot sharply from passenger flights to freight services as the primary means of transport and revenue. The airfare ticketing system will commensurately adjust -- would passengers be quantified as universal freight and be charged on a per weight basis just like their luggage?

Due to increased safety precautions, traveling passengers will be required to arrive many hours in advance of their flight to undergo medical pre-screening by the CDC, security check by TSA, ticketing, and check-in and shipping process, and Pre-Check priority will become standard for business travel.

TOURISM The phenomenon of over-tourism, when tourists alter the experience of visiting something such that they ruin the very experience, has become a very real problem in recent years, especially in the age of social media. Overseas travel and flight travel in general, which has increased exponentially in recent years, is one of the most significant contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has decimated tourism and may herald the advent of a new, cleaner alternative to physical travel: Virtual Tourism.

Even as economies begin to re-open, there will be a lingering fear of travel both for the possibility of being infected in a foreign place and being stuck in a lockdown far from home under lock-down. But the human desire to explore and experience sites both natural and man-made wonders will not cease. Technology will fill this need with the poential to create awe-inspiring “virtual travel” experiences that, in some ways, bear advantages to the actual experience. No crowds, no lines, no layovers, no long waits in a crowded plane on a hot tarmac, and perfect weather… set to the soundtrack of your choosing.

Partnerships with the destination communities, such as the use of local “virtual tour guides” can be directed via app which can help bolster their economy while avoiding over-tourism crowing and pillaging of the local heritage.

Virtual tourism won’t replace conventional toursim, only slow it down and flcus it in positive ways. In this sense it won’t preclude future physical travel, but it could serve as an educational preamble for responsible tourism at any given locale. Virtual tourists can learn about and respect natural and cultural features from coast to coast, and transform into conscientious travelers once the coasts are clear.

SPORTS + PLAY In a PO-CO society, what could be less physically distancing than a group of sweaty dudes pounding into each other at full force, with spit, blood and mud flying in all directions, into a gigantic dog-pile trying to tear a leather ball away from each other? But at the same time, what else sums up America better than the Superbowl? A truly complicated issue to resolve. How in POCO society can we make safe an activity that by its very nature is dangerous?

Is there any way that these two things can exist simultaneously?

To find examples of physically-distanced sports, look no further than Great Britain, the homeland of the personal bubble. Tennis and Croquet can “Keep Distance and Carry On.” But it’s impossible to imaging Jerry Jones gutting the Dallas Cowboys to hold tennis and croquet matches in their stadium.

Interestingly, football and hockey are already played with the most extensive personal protection equipment (PPE) in any sport. Would it simply be a matter of outfitting helmets with face shields or respirators to make them viral-safe?

The “Great American Pastime” of baseball, once famously referred to as a “game of pauses,” is also a game of distances: the pitching rubber is 60 feet 6 inches to home plate, and all base pads are 90 feet apart. Do we administer virus tests during the “Seventh Inning Stretch?” Force the catcher and umpire to wear respirators? Baseball may already be there for PO-CO participation.

Closer to home, at the playground, swing sets and see-saws with proper sanitization protocols can continue to allowed for monitored child play. The ball pits and playscapes of the world, however, will have to be re-imagined.

Maybe someone will invent a “personal bubble” suit... wait, those already exist!

CONCLUSION / ASSEMBLY Our basic societal activities for live, work and play involve some form of assembly, whether formally at organized public functions or informally at familial social gatherings. For our society to properly function, we must continue to engage in public life with a modicum of genuine safeness as well as peace of mind surrounding all responsible social activity.

In PO-CO American society, the unfortunate rift that has developed along the personal and political lines of belief could widen. Many see their duty in making personal sacrifices in order to protect the most vulnerable, while many others will tout and defend their personal freedoms over significant reform to the status quo. As citizens, we all struggle between these two forces. As designers and spacemakers we have a unique opportunity to help bridge and mend this gap for the greater good.

Certain activities may return to relative Before-COVID-19 (B.C.) normalcy, but with an overlay of relevant social and health mandates. Other areas such as those explored in this paper could undergo significant, irreversible change.

ASSEMBLY is both a right granted by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and an Occupancy Classification in the International Building Code that serves as an umbrella defining most of our every day social spaces.

How do we balance our rights, federal and local mandates, health and safety, and common sense while protecting the social constructs that make public assembly vital to the human experience?

We feel that many positive strategies have emerged even amidst our quarantined livelihoods. It would be prudent to carry the best of these into our PO-CO future and in that sense escalate our own evolution.

We have a lot of work to do.

SOURCES TOUCH

“Coronavirus: The ‘Wuhan Shake’ or the elbow bump” by BBC News World Headlines, www.bbc.com, www.twitter.com, March 3, 2020.

“Singapore enforces social distancing - with a robot dog” by Shashank Bengali, www.latimes.com, May 13, 2020.

DAILY LIFE

“Designing Social Distancing: Harnessing Behavioural Design” by Ronald Tong, www.uxplanet.com, April 7, 2020.

“Opinion: Redesigning The COVID-19 City” by Robert Muggah and Thomas Ermacora, www.npr.org, April 20, 2020

QUARANTINE

“Coronavirus: What could the West learn from Asia?” by Helier Cheung, www. bbc.com, March 21, 2020.

“How the U.S. can defeat coronavirus: Heed Asia’s lessons from past epidemics” by Shibani Mahtani and Simon Denyer, www.washingtonpost.com, March 18, 2020.

“How some cities ‘flattened the curve’ during the 1918 flu pandemic” by Nina Strochlic, www.nationalgeographic.com, March 27, 2020.

RETAIL

“Biggest Mall Operator in U.S. Plans to Reopen 49 of Them” by Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery, www.nytimes.com, April 28, 2020.

“3d scanning will be used to create unique fitted clothing” by Dezeen, video, www.youtube.com, April 28, 2016.

SOURCES OFFICE

“COVID-19: is this what the office of the future will look like?” by Harry Kretchmer, www.weforum.org, April 22, 2020.

“This is the end of the office as we know it” by Rani Molla, www.vox.com, April 14, 2020.

“Commercial Real Estate’s Havens Suddently Not So Safe” by Konrad Putzier, www.wsj.com, May 19, 2020.

“Austin’s booming office real estate could go bust as work from home becomes permanent” by Melanie Barden, www.news4sanantonio.com, 2020.

HEALTHCARE

“The current crisis has exposed the structural shortcomings of our healthcare systems” by Reinier de Graaf, www.dezeen.com, April 22, 2020 “The Future of Healthcare” by Sara Michael, www.roswellpark.org, 2010.

“Austin-based telemedicine app sees use skyrocket during COVID-19” by Melanie Torre, www.cbsaustin.com, May 27, 2020.

“The coronavirus pandemic is pushing America into a mental health crisis” by William Wan, www.washingtonpost.com, May 4, 2020.

“A radical transformation in building and designing for health is underway but not everyone will benefit equally” by Charles Shafaieh, www.gsd.harvard. edu, April 27, 2020

DINING

“‘We’re Just Risking Ourselves”: Some Austin Businesses Stay Closed as Texas Is Allowed to Reopen.

“How The Automat Paved The Way For Fast Food In The Early 1900s” by Genevieve Carlton, www.allthatsinteresting.com, May 6, 2020.

SOURCES MOVIES

“Yankee Stadium Will Turn Into a Giant Drive-In Movie Theater and Concert Venue This Summer” by Kelly Corbett, www.housebeautiful.com, May 19 2020.

HOSPITALITY

“What to expect the next time you check in to a hotel” by Seema Mody, www. cnbc.com, May , 2020.

“Is UVC Safe?” by Dr. Kevin Kahn, www.klaran.com, 2020

AIRLINES

“Social Distancing Not Viable on Airplanes, Industry Says” by Dave Keating, www.forbes.com, April 27, 2020.

“Future Air Travel: Four-Hour Process, Self Check-In, Disinfection, Immunity Passes” by Cecilia Rodriguez, www.forbes.com, May 10, 2020.

“How Airline Freight Works” by Karim Nice, www.science.howstuffworks.com, 2020.

TOURISM

“Forget drones, let a remote control person guide you around the Faroe Islands” by Tim Ecott, www.theguardian.com, April 15, 2020.

ENTERTAINMENT

“Clubbing In The Time Of COVID-19: Berlin Clubs Are Closed, So DJs Are Livestreaming” by Rob Schmitz, www.npr.org, April 18, 2020 “Arthur Mamou-Mani seeks game designers to help realise virtual Burning Man installation” by Cajsa Carlson, www.dezeen.com, April 29, 2020.