Luxury housing projects in London and New York combine spaces to work, learn and exercise – how will the pandemic affect our homes and how we live in the future?
South China Morning Post, by Peta Tomlinson
The South China Morning Post spoke to Marion Baeli about Chelsea Barracks Townhouses when they looked at luxury housing projects in London and New York and considered how the pandemic will affect our environment and how we live.
“For working or learning from home, flexibility and adaptability are two characteristics that have become paramount. Being in lockdown has revealed to us the importance of good architecture and brought about a renewed appreciation for a home of decent dimensions, light and vistas well inserted in its context. We have underestimated the importance of all these aspects and our rushed lifestyle has made us blind to these, as our life outside the home compensated for mediocre housing.
External environments and flexible internal living spaces are a feature of the Chelsea Barracks Townhouses that we have recently designed, and we think these will become key residential features that will be focused on more now than ever before. Ideally, one should be able to live with the principles of a '15 minute city' where everyone is able to meet most, if not all, of their needs within a short walk or bike ride from their home. We will also need to work together; public and private sectors, to re-thinking housing and urban living in a post-COVID world long-term.
We need to rethink the way we design with the implication of lock-down and confinement conditions in mind. This will cause a big shift in the current approach, but it is necessary and in fact a great opportunity to make better, more meaningful and purposeful architecture for the long term. And we must take this opportunity to implement a more responsible and sustainable architecture, allowing us to tackle a damaging and long-term issue that is climate change.”