"We've designed buildings for 100-year floods;" says Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, director of the Institute for Health in the Built Environment. "But there will be another epidemic or another pandemic - or there might just be another flu season. Let's go ahead and learn to design for the 100-year flu. "
Public health officials agree that one of the simplest ways to prevent the indoor spread of the virus is to increase the amount of outside air that comes into our buildings. The simple act of opening a window can meaningfully reduce the concentration of infectious (感染的) particles in the air.
But in many current office buildings, the windows aren't operable. Creating a tight air seal in a building is one of the main strategies used to make buildings more energy-saving. So architects are now wrestling with how to increase air circulation without accelerating energy consumption. One solution, according to Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, is a special type of window design. This allows outside air to be warmed or cooled, as needed, when it enters the building.
Most current office buildings usually adopt open-plan offices, which are suitable for modern office work. But in time of pandemic, viruses spread easily among workers in the office. Rather than seal employees into individual hard-walled rooms, office designers can preserve the benefits of open-plan offices by fitting airflow systems that clean the air breathed out. For example, vents (通风口) can be installed at the top of the room to pull out the cloud of exhaled (呼出的) air and for fresh air to be delivered along the floor. This type of "biophilic design" can increase productivity and improve physical health.
What all these changes have in common is that they'll happen only if the public continue to focus on indoor health after the acute crisis of the pandemic has passed. In the long run, what's perhaps even more important is making whole environments support human immune function.
