Hospitals After COVID-19: How Do We Design for an Uncertain Future?

Even before COVID, there was a growing recognition that buildings of every kind needed to be more flexible, as technological change far outpaces the development cycle. But in practice, any redundancy in a design has often ended up on the cutting room floor because it adds cost or complexity or because it is not compliant with building codes or standards. The pandemic has added powerfully to the case for flexibility – disrupting operations in every part of the built environment and promising to disrupt markets for many years to come.

In healthcare, a gargantuan effort was required to replan and reengineer buildings almost overnight so that they could safely cope with COVID-19, and attention is turning to how the switch to “pandemic mode” might be made more easily in the future. Greater flexibility would have helped this time. It will make us more resilient in future outbreaks.