Design and Behavioural Changes and the Workplace Comfort

The Global Covid-19 Pandemic has brought in with it, new protocols, new safety measures, new patterns of behavioural changes and an array of unlearning and rethinking in terms of Design And Planning. Aludecor presents The Post Lockdown Roadmap to Design & Planning, where we delve deeper into the New Normal and its different facets. It is a Four Chapter Insight Series that brings in elevated perspectives of the Industry Leaders and their subjective views on Design & Planning in the Post Lockdown Situation.

Chapter II “Design and Behavioural Changes and the Workplace Comfort” unfolds with our eminent Panellists Ar. Vijay Tuteja (Partner in InAwe Design Concepts and Chief Architect cum Head Planning & Project Management Services with Ashiana Homes Pvt. Ltd.), Mr. Ashish Rakheja (Managing Partner – AEON Integrated Building Design Consultants, Chairman, Technical Committee of Indian Green Building Council) Ar. Rajiv Khanna (Founding Principal, Studio KIA), Ar. Sabeena Khanna (Principal Architect, Studio KIA) & Ar. Mohd. Amin Nayyar (Principal Architect ANA Design Pvt. Ltd).

“What are the design and behavioural changes you are foreseeing post lockdown?”

Vijay Tuteja: First thing I foresee is that the after-effects of this pandemic COVID 19 will be there for a while and we will have to learn to live with it. And with reference to social distancing, when we talk about our building designs, there’s a new term that has emerged – building distancing. For instance, in the present scenario, a medium-sized commercial building will have about 15 to 20 tenants. And every tenant will have about 15 to 20 Courier guys coming in the morning till afternoon, and again, the same phenomena happen in the evening. Those are the kind of visitors which are not desired in any building now because of the spike in infection rates. So the future building designs should have a small area in the basement where all these guys go and deliver the package so that we avoid getting them into the building.

Now if you consider the taller building at say, Cyber Hub, Gurgaon, they have 8 to 12 lifts, and every lift has a lift attendant who is sitting on a stool which is his occupying space. Do we need that? So these are things which we need to be looked at in greater detail.  

“How do you plan in Creating Zones of Faith in workplaces?”

Amin Nayyar: Going forward, the most important thing is going to be education and understanding of how this pathogen spreads and how I can on a regular basis screen myself to make sure I’m not a carrier because like anyone of you, I can also be one. We need to create Zones of Faith within us, and in the workplaces, we inhabit. There is a real fear that the idea of social distancing should not end up being emotional distancing as well. We are not going to survive as a race if we don’t come together.

Read also: The New Normal – Perspectives of the Retail, the Hospitality and the Residential Spaces

Most children at home now are disliking online classes. They’re not going to be happy for the next five years listening to stuff on a computer. So it’s going to be zones of comfort that we need to define, and as a professional community, we will need to come together.

“What’s your take on the treatment given to labours before the lockdown? Is that the reason so much of migration happened as they felt there’s no belonging with their places of work?”

Amin Nayyar: Look at the images on the highways and the roads of the country today. These are the people who built the buildings that we designed, and I have been part of discussions where people have said look there’s an inauguration in a few days, we need this labour camp off – that’s how we used to always treat them. We’ve now started putting SEC GCC terms saying, even if it is a cost of the project the contractors are going to start ensuring twelve months filling for people.

“Please share some of your opinions on the new design norm being planned at workspaces and residences?”

Sabeena Khanna: Since we have never faced a situation like this before, so here onwards our thinking has to be very different like a totally new world norm where professional across fields need to come together to plan. Work from home is totally a new concept, and most of our homes were not prepped for this concept. Those who are able to, are fortunate enough! Most of the houses are small with multiple family members, how rooms to be prepped and yet have isolation spaces without disturbing the rest of the family members remains a question. Larger residential communities can think of turning their club spaces into makeshift offices while maintaining social distancing with shift timings for those residents who are having space crunch at home.

Coming to offices, total touchless experience and deep sanitization need to be planned. Voice-controlled elevators, sanitization tunnels, automatic doors, and screening of cleaning staff is what we need to look upon.  

Rajiv Khanna Situation at shanties and slums like Dharavi where ten people live a single shanty. The challenge of social distancing lies in those areas where they are helpless due to space constraint. How will the nation move forward and win the challenge of fighting COVID if they are ignored? And the festivals that are coming up where mass gathering happens, that will be another big challenge. 

“Do you think UV light is an effective measure to stop the spread of the virus?”

Ashish Rakheja: UV technology is very effective in killing any kind of virus to start with. We need to keep in mind that just by lighting UV lamps across the office premises will not disinfect the space. The prime cause for the spread of the virus is the contact with the droplets which come out during the cough and the sneezing, social distancing to be maintained, for the time being, covering your mouth or having your hands covered. UV technology is secondary protection, and we cannot simply turn all our spaces into hospital zones.

Please also remember the UV is ultimately detrimental to human health if there’s direct contact. But having said that UV had been the most promising for the killing virus. I also heard about Far UVC light, which is a low/shorter wavelength UV that doesn’t penetrate the human skin but can still pause the spread of the virus. 

“What should be the right temperature of Air Conditioning?”

Ashish Rakheja: There are enough guidelines being shared from societies like ASHRAE and ISHRAE, and there’s a lot of misinformation in the system about getting infected through the air conditioning system. There are four lines of defences. The first is the temperature ranges. So the prescribed temperature is anything about 24 to 27 degrees. The second aspect is a relative humidity – at drier humid conditions the transmission becomes faster because your own body defences mechanism of the mucous membrane that you have, do not function there. So relative humidity which is higher something on 50% to 60% to 70 % side would be something to talk about. The third, which is the topmost defence, is the ventilation, that is the dilution of the air inside. The fourth part is filtration; a better filtration is what that is required. The Green Building movement always spoke about these four aspects in their indoor Environmental Quality section

“How has the COVID scenario affected the Building Material Industry, and what will be difficult to source and challenging to use after the lockdown?”

Vijay Tuteja: Default materials which are made from March to May in the building industry are burnt bricks, coarse and fine sand and coarse aggregate for making concrete. These materials are stacked before the monsoon arrives as they get affected by rains. This time because of the COVID situation, the makers couldn’t make bricks for stacking; hence the business is already affected and very soon the sites will reopen by end June, and there will be a shortage of these materials. With monsoons, the quality of aggregate fine sand will further deteriorate. The balance between demand and supply will be affected too. On the other hand, cement prices have gone up for no reasons. For two months the stacked cement was not used, and it has gone stale as cement has a shelf life.

Amin Nayyar: It’s an artificial stoppage of business. And it will recover. From the standpoint of the real estate industry, there’s a crisis. There is a material problem; labour has gone away. But yes real estate rates will rise. I have a counter-question. Is anybody asking that to the vehicle industry? The economy is going through a bad time, so is the cost of vehicles going to rise? The answer is no! Cost of vehicles is not going to rise. It’s an opportunity to look at a paradigm shift in the way a building’s performance is measured. But I believe that they offer a massive opportunity, a huge upside to the entire building industry to get its act together and really move up the value chain. This is, I think an incredible opportunity for growth and business for those people who focus in the right direction and have the staying power for the next six months.

“Is Technology and technological advances, in the Real Estate and Architecture Industry- 3D printing as a new way out, as suggested by many. Do you agree?”

Ashish Rakheja: It’s not just 3D printing; there are many technologies out there which will benefit our design community. In my personal opinion, these technologies will take much longer time in India to get implemented, because our businesses, whether it’s architecture or engineering, are not viable the way we are doing business. We are working on low margins. You need to invest money to invest in technologies.

Amin Nayyar: The other technology gaining importance is BIM, Building Information. It’s become more popular in the last few years. It allows for offline communication, coordination, it reduces the number of man-hours required by multiple experts and subject matter experts to come in and finish up the work. It avoids confusions. You don’t have to be an expert in reading drawings to be able to understand what the building is about. It’s in 3D. It’s like virtually constructing a building on your server before you actually go to the site. We don’t need to be in every country or every geography that we are working for. But this technology offers massive amounts of collaborative power. You can put it on the Cloud.

“What’s the current status of existing projects and movement with respect to the completion of projects?”

Sabeena Khanna: Due to the sudden standstill, projects have been stalled and delayed. So many labours left, we could not do a site inspection, physical distancing had to be maintained. Hence project deliveries are definitely going to be impacted. Also, it’s going to depend upon the size and the typology of the project. We can think of starting the work with local labour to help in finishing the project. Mid-size projects that are currently underway can have local labours working in shifts. Also, its time to look at Prefab project coming where the fit-outs will come straight from the factories and it just being installed, so you don’t have much labour usage.

Rajiv Khanna: We also how China builds those hospitals in 10 days 15 days, they were Industrial in nature and were all prefab. They were all brought by trailer trucks, and they were all mechanized. 

“What was the good thing to take away from the pandemic?”

Vijay Tuteja: Virtual meetings helped us to connect to the various sites we have from Delhi to Haryana to Bhubaneswar and do the supervision.

Ashish Rakheja: With respect to personal lives which we got to spend with our families, business-wise this aspect of remote working, that work can be done remotely as far as design is concerned.

Amin Nayyar: When people get pushed, the fear of not being able to survive makes us also accept new things. It’s a tipping point of our industry. To open up their minds and just accept that there an alternative way of working and that also have been proved fruitful. I think it is the single biggest takeaway from this disaster.

Sabeena Khanna and Rajiv Khanna: This pandemic taught us to respect nature. We have been taught to learn to leave nature alone and not abuse it. We are talking about redesigning, repurposing our building, we can think of integrating nature into that, which is very important going to Biophilic design- use nature to make your spacers healthier, give nature that respect that it deserves. That’s the awakening call for all of us. Second is to respect humanity, though all of us are locked up in our own homes in isolation, that is also strengthening our bond of connecting emotionally.