Interior Architect Umut Gürler Discussed the Architectural Impact of the Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic that entered daily life in 2020 was still going at the end of 2021. Researchers said parts of it would continue into 2022 and even 2023. Curfews, working from home, online school, and the habits of masks and distance were still in use, sometimes lighter and sometimes stricter.

The outbreak also changed what people want from a building. Distance and the outdoors started to matter more. Over a longer period, many people are leaving dense urban blocks, mass housing and tall residences and turning back toward the ground. Interior architect Umut Mehmet Gürler says that turn will speed up. New designs are needed so that daily life, and especially children's daily life, sits closer to the outdoors. He says vertical building is losing its hold and that cities will talk more about horizontal building: courtyards, front gardens, back gardens and terraces, in the manner of older Anatolian houses.

He also points to migration. Hobby gardens, villas outside the city, villages, towns and the coast will matter more. Living with a garden, even a small one, is good for children and adults. A house in the garden can grow a little of its own food, and keeping an animal becomes possible again. Gürler says the office, in this period, has mostly been helping people who want to move into a detached house and have it designed in a current way.

After the controlled easing, not only families but businesses moved toward detached buildings and places with a garden outside the city centre. He expects that to spread. Much of the country sits in a high earthquake zone, and horizontal building is a serious step there too. Lately the office has often been asked to design houses in hobby gardens, and villas and detached houses near the city.

The shift to horizontal building, he says, will be a gain for the country and beyond. Plans to move into detached houses will speed up in 2022 and 2023. It is useful for earthquake areas, for children, and for people's peace of mind.