Author: Cyril Richert

Nearly two years ago the world was learning about Covid. At the end of January 2020 we watched with astonishment people locked inside their own homes in some areas of China. Here, by the end of March 2020, the Prime Minister was ordering British people to stay at home. Over the period, “lockdown” had become one of the most searched word on Google. Students and young professionals were amongst the most affected as many have been confined in their small studio flats for months, without much possibility to go outside and mix with others. Office space, gyms, restaurants, cinemas, community spaces were closed and studies show that the more you depended on that, the more you were affected.

What have we learnt from this? That personal space is critical, that access to private outside amenity is essential? The pandemic does not seem to affect the reasoning of developers in this country. The trending idea, which started before the pandemic, seems to be to allocate only a tiny private space to individuals and mixing as much as possible for everything else. Continue reading →