The raging COVID-19 pandemic has startled the world almost like nothing has till date. The ‘new normal’ is an echo resounding time and again. Design thinking and innovation need to respond to these shifting ways of life. Architecture students in the final year must understand the need to touch the pandemic subject matter as a part of their thesis proposals. In a practical world, adaptation of pandemic induced design strategies is going to be slow. But architectural thesis provides students an opportunity to present the world with their hypothetical ideas. Address these issues with a critical eye, deep mindset and a human-centric approach- who knows the world might be waiting for your unparalleled design solution.

Following is a list of thesis ideas you can explore in a post-pandemic world.

Thesis ideas to explore in a post-pandemic world

1.      Primary Healthcare

The overwhelming burden on healthcare facilities in these dire times has necessitated the need for architecture to be re-thought in conjunction with infection control mechanisms and fast assembled construction. Even inputs are required for existing healthcare facilities to be repurposed for and beyond the pandemic. Ideas of quick modular construction, lightweight architecture, inclusion of medical waste recycling centers, portable clinics, testing laboratories, medical gas availability and cost-efficiency can be explored.

2.      Urban and Civic design

To promote healthier and resilient cities, you can suggest new schemes that reimagine the social life of citizens, public toilets and hygiene, widened sidewalks, easier wayfinding, transport terminals, suburban revival- all designed in a manner that can help control the spread of diseases even in the future.

3.      Reconceptualise Educational environments

Engaging and managing kids is a difficult task and rules alone can never ensure that they follow physical distancing. Think how ideal pedagogical environments can be designed in a way that architecture and design elements enforce a discipline where cleanliness and sanitation is maintained. Take into consideration how play time spaces and equipment can be revamped.

4.      Quarantine facilities

Modular, flexible, shiftable and transportable patient care facilities can be designed. Adaptive reuse of empty public spaces and buildings by determining the conversion quotient of each space can be carried out.

5.      Festival celebrations and Public gatherings

India is home to a plethora of festivals, the celebration of which is deeply impacted since the onset of the pandemic. Focus your dissertation on the newer and distanced ways of public celebrations. Can large celebrations be split into smaller ones in empty pockets present in every neighbourhood? Mobilize your creativity and provide spatial solutions to control the spread while revelling in the festivals.

6.      Market redesign

Mixed-use markets can be a new category popping up as visiting a single place that fulfils a majority of your needs reduces the chances of infection to a great extent. Think if you can redesign and modularise just a market lorry to display goods in an organised fashion that the need to touch each product gets eliminated.

7.      Interventions for dense neighbourhoods and slums

In a virus infested world, where home comes as a refuge from infections, people residing in dense neighbourhoods are not really sheltered from the virus even in their homes. Plan strategies where even the population residing in these dense squatter settlements can control the virus and hence the spread. Discuss and define schemes where sanitised spaces are both possible and affordable for them.

8.      Disaster management

We have seen how different unused public spaces were converted into alternative care facilities. You can focus on what can be done as an emergency response to such global epidemics and pandemics. How can makeshift hospitals, testing labs, and patient-care facilities be erected, maybe by faster construction methods or adaptive reuse in high-spread areas is something that can be thoroughly researched upon.

9.      Hospitality and Tourism

How can we eliminate pathogenic risks in an interconnected world? Your thesis could focus on retrofitting spatial environments for crowd control and catering infection-proof tourism. Hotels and restaurants may need to include touch-free operations, automation, HVAC systems, antimicrobial surfaces, more dined spaces than buffets, dedicated sanitiser stand spots and so on.

10. Public Spaces

A public library, gardens and parks, beaches, city squares- all such spaces where there is ‘public’ needs overwhelming inputs in terms of design and guidelines. Explore how existing spaces can be revamped. Your thesis could focus on ideas that should become a part of the Development Control Regulations for controlling the spread of such pandemics.

Architecture as a profession has come to the forefront and architects have become principal participants who can actively control this pathogenic spread. The need to revisit architecture design is now more than ever. Explore in terms of materials, floorings and fixtures that are antiviral and antimicrobial. Craft newer and efficient spatial solutions that address the issues of density, social distancing, sanitisation, wayfinding, ventilation, and oxygen availability. Architects have the power to serve a spatial medicine to the world with their creative and strategic thinking.  Hope your dissertation seeks to make the planet a safer, healthier and a resilient place!