"The house is the shelter, the body that holds us on every side and protects us." Psychologist Jean Louis Laurent Covid-19 has revealed the fragility of the houses we produce, rather, the places to shelter people. Millions around the world have to respond to the strict calls to stay at home to protect themselves against infection with a virus for which a cure has not yet been discovered. Even after the drug was discovered and vaccination campaigns began all over the world, calls for social distancing and longer stays at home are still effective.
"The house is the shelter, the body that holds us on every side and protects us." Psychologist Jean Louis Laurent
Covid-19 has revealed the fragility of the houses we produce, rather, the places to shelter people. Millions around the world have to respond to the strict calls to stay at home to protect themselves against infection with a virus for which a cure has not yet been discovered. Even after the drug was discovered and vaccination campaigns began all over the world, calls for social distancing and longer stays at home are still effective.
From observing housing conditions in most countries in Middle East, Africa, Asia, Latin American and even some provinces of Europe and the states of America, it is obviously that the vast majority of them were designed to be house, family meeting place and areas full of meaning, value and warmth.
The Covid-19 virus reveals the housing design crimes, in which people crammed for weeks in spite of that they are hardly suitable for sleep. It is becomes essential to call for review of approaches, architectural design, real estate investment and housing projects in the post Covid-19 era.
Here, the importance of humanizing the housing or transforming the physical spaces of houses into human spaces for the practice of life arises. The Covid-19 virus alerted us that the most of the housing design are utilitarian spaces that cannot tolerate the flows of life. The Covid-19 crisis revealed that many housing unit in the Arab world are expelling spaces. Therefore, many suffer from the crisis of confinement inside it, and suffering intensified when isolation within it was the only available option during the periods of complete closure.
The idea of humanizing the city and transforming its spaces into human-friendly places has been deeply regionally and globally discussed. However, it seems that we must not stop humanization of the city and extend the argument to the humanization of housing as part of a more comprehensive process that is the humanization of the Arab city. This humanization relates to the ability of the different housing spaces to relieve isolation, achieve family social interaction and communication with nature and semi-public and public external spaces. Many in the Arab world boast that they live in enclosed fortresses surrounded by walls and completely separated, independent of what is round them, and then they mitigate its intensity and market it as "closed societies".
The ability of houses to accommodate people inside it for a long time was not tested nor treated as an important and influential design criterion until awakening occurred with the spread of the epidemic and the necessity of isolation. We have discovered that even a spacious house that does not have spacious balconies, a pleasant garden or a beautiful roof top, are places of suffering in the time of home isolation. It is required in post Covid-19 houses to present a different proposal that extend beyond mechanical modeling and produces creative ideas and entrances to transform houses into family humanitarian meetings that inspire from the lessons of past and do not compromise with the time. The enforces isolation of millions, especially in the context of Middle Eastern cities, even rich ones such as the Gulf cities, has made it clear that houses are lack spaces to intensify life. They miss gardens, miss the pleasant rooftop, miss the beautiful window and miss the beautiful balcony. We need to re-understand the value and aesthetics of places, especially in the houses, and realize the difference between the houses as a material entities made and the houses that loaded with emotions, dreams and memories.
The late Egyptian architect, the leader Hassan Fathi, meditated, expressing his great admiration for saying of one of the heroes of novel "the Castle" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, where the road's sheikh says in the desert, "My father's house in which every step has meaning." What is the creativity of this saying, which truly expresses a deeper view of house, from a more cover for protection to a human domain and an emotional space inhabited by humans and also inhabited by meanings, feelings and thoughts.
"Our successive houses never disappear, we leave without them, because they live in their turn, present and invisible, in our memories and dreams." Michel de Certeau – The Daily Invention book
The pandemic has confirmed, more than ever, the extent to which housing is inextricable related to health and life, and highlighted the importance of houses as places for safety, work, education and security and the ever-resent need to find new housing conditions. After distinct experience of people living in prolonged house isolation that began as limited days, it quickly developed and spread to months in cities around the world. Many families have discovered the spatial elements of their houses and rearranged their priorities. This process came as a result of the need to carry out various basic activities new to houses, including work, education and entertainment. Therefore, functional flexibility in houses has crystallized as an important aspect.
Regarding the idea of houses as workplace, for many, the house is the new workplace during the Covid-19 pandemic era and this phenomenon is also promoted as the new normal to which we must get used. Tens thousands of Arab architects are supposed to have the energy and ability to present a different proposal that goes beyond mechanical modeling and produce ideas and creative approaches to transform houses into human, family gatherings inspired from the lessons of the past and do not compromise with the time.