“People are time bound entities transiting from cradle to grave. Any “solved problem” that involves human beings solves a problem whose parameters must change through time.”
Living in Cambridge, Massachusetts during the COVID Pandemic, I would say my spouse and I have largely been lucky (in terms of health and caseloads in the area). In other words, our lives have largely gone unimpeded. However, one thing we have noticed on our routine walks have been the seemingly high number of restaurant closures. From our own observations, the shutdown has seemingly reclassified restaurants into three different Darwinian categories: the adaptors (hastily constructed makeshift outdoor covered or uncovered seating, sometimes in the right-of-way), the ignorers (indoor seating only, most likely due to a restriction of outdoor space, with little to no natural ventilation) and the extinct (shuttered since the beginning of lockdown, doomed never to reopen for one reason or another). Of the latter category, this constitutes about 1/5 of all restaurants and bars in Massachusetts, or about 3,600 spaces (per CBS Boston).
This loss will inevitably have far reaching consequences on the economic and social fabric of neighborhoods, not just in MA, but all across the country. More importantly this reveals how inflexible some of these spaces were devised from their conception, justifiably never assuming something like this would happen yet revealing a serious shortcoming.
If made me think of an old project I had done in 2005 in Undergraduate school for a high-end restaurant in Chicago’s loop, situated on the ground floor of the John B. and Alice R. Sharp Building, an early 20th century Holabird and Roche designed building at the corner of N Wabash and E Monroe St. The space is now (was?) a student center for my alma mater, but the proposal I worked on had envisioned a series of stationary translucent partitions that delineated seating arrangements for a modern commercial restaurant. There wasn’t anything particularly awe inspiring about the scheme, but I did reflect on, if this had been constructed years ago, how it would have fallen into the extinct category of restaurants now pervading the restaurant industry in metropolitan cities. Could something have been done to keep the business operating during these trying times?
The original parti was fairly conducive to a flexible spatial arrangement and the façade had previously been built out with a simpatico curtain wall system so there was no need to take a historical renovation approach. I began to imagine these original partitions with multiple functions, able to slide and rotate to accommodate different configurations all while adhering to CDC guidelines (maintaining 6 ft of distance between parties, among others). Incorporate pivoting curtain walls on the exterior to allow a continuous stream of fresh air into the space, and perhaps an argument could be made for more informed designs for commercial restaurant spaces in the near future. The following are some of these explorations
As a personal note, it is simultaneously horrifying and satisfying to revisit old work, re-interpreting it under a more informed understanding. It reflects the old aphorism that design is never done, but it also holds opportunity for contextually specific conundrums.
