
What coronavirus will do to our offices and homes - karimford
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-dc2d6e2d-3ab4-42de-8d03-bb7eda5fff8e
======
thewhitetulip
I don't think this will happen. People are affected by Corona, yes, but that
is because corona is a thing today.

Once corona goes away, only the paranoid will follow these guidelines.

Pretty much majority of the population will go back to normal way of life
unaffected.

Climate crisis is irreversible and nobody gives a shit about it. How can we
think that corona will change everything?

That being said, if it does change people then it os a very good thing

~~~
flexie
I don't think fear of diseases will drive it. I will be driven by profits.
Companies have realized that you can have 1,000 people in what used to be a
200 person office by having them work from home most days. The savings are
substantial.

Employees too will save. You can easily live 50-100 km away in a suburb if you
only need to commute to work once a week or maybe less.

Of course, when employees don't have to pay dearly to live downtown NYC or
centrally in London, companies will soon realize that they can pay them less
as well.

You could argue that this could have happened without corona, but culture is
hard to change. What many companies have seen now, is that virtually entire
offices can work remotely, and that even sales people and mid level managers
can do their jobs remotely.

Also, technology has improved. Bandwidth is far better today than 10 years
ago. Companies use cloud solutions to a larger extent where before employees
were hooked up to a local server room. The work station is now a laptop
connecting via WiFi. 10 years ago, most used desktops with cat cables.

It has already started by companies continuing the lock-down by offering
limitless or plentiful work from home days for employees. Then, they will fund
proper chairs and desks at home, maybe part of the electricity bill. It's far
cheaper than having to pay for your cubicle in NYC.

Growing companies will delay the plans of leasing more office space. They will
introduce work-from-home policies in stead. Companies in financial trouble
will get rid of the office more quickly than otherwise.

I thought that at least employees in their 20's would want to work in an
office. After all, office life is a large part of your social life when you
are a young professional. But in the companies I know of that did surveys in
the last weeks of the lock-down on who wanted to return to the office first,
even the young employees chose to continue to work from home. These were
surveys involving hundreds or thousands of employees and more than 60 percent
of the young employees wanted to work from home although the offices were in
new class A buildings.

Yes, you will miss out of the part of your social life that offices did
provide. But that will free up time for social life elsewhere. On your own
terms. Yes, there are certainly things that are more efficient face-to-face.
But how many hours did employees waste commuting to the office, talking to
colleagues at the water cooler, attending meetings, going for lunch breaks
etc.? Office life was never super efficient either.

~~~
thewhitetulip
Yes there are pros and cons for sure. It eventually depends on people

I live 1hr away from office but I either read books or watch TV shows. 1yr ago
i had red 54 books in one year

Also in office i walk at least 5km inside office, going up & down 6 floors of
stairs + tea break and what not

At home, I'm sitting in front of PC too depressed to step out

------
riffic
This is an overly fantastic crystal-ball piece and I don't expect things will
be as far changed as this article is trying to sell us.

It reminds me of those old AT&T "You Will" commercials, which did eventually
come true but in a vastly different way than first envisioned (newspapers by
fax? come on.)

Also, most people (baristas, truck drivers, all those invisible service people
and laborers in between) don't have jobs that look like this. This completely
dismisses their experiences.

~~~
Trasmatta
Yeah, this is pretty ridiculous. I'm putting a reminder for 2025 to reread
this piece to see if literally any of it came true.

------
hn_throwaway_99
Ugh, I certainly hope not. In one sense, yes, covid has accelerated some
things that were already in transition, like greater work from home. But why
would we think this increased isolation, sanitization, and separation would be
a good thing _outside of a pandemic_? There is no need for wide hallways,
limiting people to 2 per elevator, copious hand sanitizer use, or touchless
everything to avoid "grubby" buttons when we're not in a pandemic. Yes, germs
are a risk, but there are also risks in thinking for some reason it is healthy
to live in a sterile, and separated, environment.

~~~
jjeaff
I don't know, why would we continue to subject ourselves to useless TSA
security theater rubdowns and millimeter wave scanners that can see your naked
body under your clothes adding hours to the onboarding process when most
experts agree it is ineffective and most logical beings understand that
another 9/11 can never really happen again the way it did?

I suspect what will drive a lot of changes like these will be insurance.
Companies will want pandemic insurance and insurance companies will not offer
reasonable premiums without certain precautions in place because the cost of
payouts is too high.

~~~
alphabettsy
I thought what we’ve learned about TSA security theater is that another 9/11
could happen and what we’re doing wouldn’t prevent it.

~~~
jjeaff
The possibility of another 9/11 became non-viable about 10 minutes after a
second plane hit the WTC. It's the reason Flight 915 didn't make it to
Washington DC.

The passengers on 915 received the news of what was happening in NYC and the
Pentagon and rushed the cockpit and the terrorists. You can't hold a plane
hostage if the occupants know you are taking them on a suicide mission.

------
smabie
Ah yes, like the geodesic domes erected over major cities that filter the
toxic air, contaminated by the bioviruses released during the Great War. The
mud-girls and mud-boys of the Sprawl fight over the scraps of obselete tech
left behind by the chrome plated gods of New Eden; watching over the condemned
above the gravity well.

~~~
chongli
What is this a reference to? “Chrome-plated gods” reminds me of Caves of Qud,
but the other bits are unfamiliar.

~~~
smabie
A little of every cyberpunk novel, I suppose.

------
asveikau
I don't think social distancing will be big in 2025, just as it wasn't in
1923, the same distance away from 1918.

I really hope we don't see a late 20th century style flee of cities either.
The problems with that from last time are well documented.

~~~
blinkengus
But how many of those problems stemmed from the external requirement that
those fleeing would have to commute back in 5 days per week, and for the most
part all on the same 9-5 schedule? There's a version of moving away from dense
urban cores that still accommodates community, transportation, public space,
local necessities, commerce and small businesses, etc.

~~~
asveikau
Many of those issues had nothing to do with how crappy commuting is for
affluent people (a significant problem) but what happens to the people without
the means to escape.

Local tax base diminishes, concentration of low incomes leads to a sort of
ghettoization, etc.

Personally I think density and varied income levels within that are good for a
number of reasons.

------
orliesaurus
Reading this article one thing shocked me: Do a lot of homes not have double
glazing in the UK? I thought it was a standard, because it's so much more
efficient at keeping cool/warmth inside/outside (depending on season)

~~~
mattlondon
I would say it would be unusual not to have double glazing these days. It has
been a thing for decades and there are grants available to make your property
more energy efficient.

That said there are a lot of a) old buildings that are protected and so can't
have the windows replaced easily/in an economically viable way (e.g. each
window needing to be hand-crafted in wood to non-standard sizes to look
identical bto what was there before), b) a lot of just properties nrented out
to single people who rent a single room etc and the landlord simply doesn't
care/bother, c) houses that were lived in by someone for the last 30/40/50
years where basically no maintenance or decoration had been done - they've
died and someone else had moved in.

------
mikehollinger
So I’ve been wondering about this. In the states at least the trend in home
design recently seems to have been toward big open floor plans with a couple
of large spaces, a kitchen, and bedrooms.

We have no such concept as “breakout” rooms at home for studying or work, or
other things that might demand privacy or focus. I certainly don’t want to go
back to the “old” 70’s style home with a bunch of similarly sized partitioned
rooms, but I’d like to have some small “focus” spaces or something more
cleverly named, similar in concept to the breakout rooms that run along the
edge off most shared professional office spaces.

Some homes have a library or home office, but I’ve yet to see a place that has
two offices of equal size. Some people have converted a spare bedroom into an
office - but - what if you actually need the bedroom, or in our case, what if
you need two offices?

I’m sort of waiting for that to become a thing. It’d be pretty sweet.

------
karimford
“One day, the virus will subside. It could be eradicated. But even then, life
will not simply return to the way it was before Covid-19. Spurred on by the
coronavirus crisis, architects have been rethinking the buildings we inhabit.“

------
ahelwer
I've certainly made the jump to a fully-thought-out home office[0], but masks
are conspicuously absent from this article - facial recognition? Good luck
when I continue wearing my nice face covering in public long after this
specific virus is under control.

Things like the virus-killing HVAC system are interesting. Makes you consider
our current buildings from a future perspective, like in what ways they'll
think we're hilariously backwards, hygiene-wise.

[0] [https://ahelwer.ca/post/2020-08-09-home-
ergonomics/](https://ahelwer.ca/post/2020-08-09-home-ergonomics/)

~~~
jjeaff
There are already quite a few biometric detection options in production out
there that can ID you just fine with a mask on. Just your eyes and forehead
are probably enough for a lot of facial recognition and then there is gait
detection that can identify you by how you walk or even heart beat rythmn
detection that I believe requires a laser sensor of some type.

------
yosito
Realistically, the changes will be the ones that have a minimum cost to
implement: downsizing offices, working from home, movement out of expensive
cities and back into suburbs, and offices retrofitted with cheap solutions
like hand sanitizer dispensers, plexiglass dividers, and spaced out desks.
Things that require a huge investment like copper surfaces, plant dividers,
fewer people per square meter, simply won't be worth it when the alternative
is not to invest in office space at all.

------
legulere
> It also reduces the humidity to help prevent germs multiplying

Too low humidity is also bad:
[https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0266/9493/files/Humidity-H...](https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0266/9493/files/Humidity-
Health-Floors.jpg?370)

------
kingkawn
The antimicrobial obsession on full view here is recognized as being the cause
of maladaptive immune development

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/health/immune-system-
alle...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/health/immune-system-
allergies.html)

------
zachware
This is honestly the most ridiculous article/amazing visual journalism
possible.

Bear with me here....This article assumes that we either a) have no path
around COVID-19 via a vaccine and/or b) we spend five years failing to follow
the data on infection morbidity risk as high for those with established co-
morbitities or old age and/or c) that even if we succeed at a and/or b that
future pathogens are detected by body temp or mitigated by hand washing.

And even if I'm completely wrong about all of the above, this article relies
on zero empirical data to predict 2025.

This is a sign of our media times. It's a movie script, not journalism. And
each click and scroll reinforces to the creators that they should create more
of this empirically hollow print.

------
mattlondon
Hmm.

I think as soon as we get a vaccine, or even just a test that will tell you if
you will end up in ICU or not, 95% of people will head back to the office.

Even among the people who at first found WFH a huge productivity gain, I've
noticed a recent trend of people fatiguing of it. The initial boon to
concentration (assuming you have a quiet home which not everyone does) and not
having to commute etc was great, but it seems like for a lot of people it is
starting to wear a bit thin now.

Pre-lockdown I used to work from home quite frequently and would happily put
up with video calls, but I am growing to hate WFH now. Video meetings are
increasingly grating due to their latency and people's patchy wifi. Ad-hoc
informal collaboration/chats are down to zero - everything now has to be
formally scheduled and arranged vs when you'd just bump into someone in the
corridor/getting coffee etc. Getting a feel for what the team is working on is
hard, even with regular stand-ups etc there is no "overhearing" people talking
about stuff around you.

Personally I do not have the space for a dedicated office set up where I live
- I have a desk in the corner of my living room which is the same room that
the rest of my family use while I am trying to work. I __do not __like the
idea that I will have that there forever now - if my job wants me to work from
my house forever, they can increase my salary 200% so I can stand a chance of
buying somewhere in /around London with space for an office.

As soon as we have a vaccine, or a test to know if I will end up in ICU vs
being asymptomatic, or there is just some pill you can take if you test
positive that means you get a bad fever and not a near-death coma etc, I will
be right back there in the office a usual no questions asked.

------
cameldrv
The article asserts that a bunch of things will change in the future, but it
doesn't say why. We'll live in more expensive houses, further from work,
renovate all of our offices and homes, and change all of our daily and weekly
routines, because of a virus that everyone is vaccinated against?

~~~
tirpen
No, because because of the _next_ virus.

~~~
Hamuko
In what, 100 years? How many global pandemics have we had?

~~~
meitham
Regulations usually kick in shortly to mitigate crisis like this happening,
just like the 2008 financial crisis regulation. Without regulation no economy
in the world can sustain another similar hit within the next decade.

~~~
cameldrv
That's true. There is always a tendency to fight the last war, especially when
it comes to bureaucrats. That said, of all of the things that could really
knock us out, I'd still put viruses among the smaller threats.

Societies that are able to accurately assess risk and their ability and
cost/benefit to mitigate it will tend to outperform societies that don't.

------
cpr
More fear porn from the Beeb. Please don’t post this noise on HN.

------
peterwwillis
> Laila makes a coffee in the kitchen area

Seriously? You're worried about viruses and yet you're still gonna allow the
"coffee petri dish," where hundreds of grubby dirty hands fondle communal
cups, bowls, coffee machine buttons, creamer, sugar, stirrers? To say nothing
of the giant "catered lunch" buffets with no sneeze guards.

> The air conditioning system uses UV light to kill pathogens. It also reduces
> the humidity to help prevent germs multiplying, responding to a stream of
> data from sensors fixed around the building, and wearable sensors used by
> staff.

Yet it's still got 50-year-old unmaintained fiberglass insulation inside the
ducts, which, because the overlayment breaks down over time, streams tiny
particles of glass throughout the office to be inhaled. (this has probably
been happening in your office for some time if it's an older building)

> The staff got fed up with plastic everywhere a couple of years ago. They
> said it made the office feel like a hospital. Laila prefers the plants.

The plants are plastic now. Too many finicky potential problems like
mold/mildew, they're hard to clean, not maintenance-free.

> It's face-to-face with colleagues - but all at a safe distance.

We don't even practice social distancing _now_. It's not gonna happen at work
with people who feel comfortable around each other. And honestly, what's the
point indoors? You cough and the overhead A/C pushes microscopic water
particles way farther than 6 feet.

> It's 16:00 and time to go home. Laila moved to the suburbs with a friend
> after the lockdown in 2020. It's a longer commute, but she doesn't mind as
> it's only once a week.

There a lot of roommates in the suburbs? Most middle-class young people
working in offices like this will still need several roommates to afford rent,
what with cost of living constantly increasing but pay not adjusting as much
(news flash: covid-19 has not fixed income inequality). The suburbs aren't
actually much cheaper in most parts, because people who work in cities live in
them. People will continue to live in cities because there's still more access
to everything in them.

> she knew she would need a home office [..] There's a new standing desk, a
> properly adjustable office chair and storage for documents

I work from home now and I don't need a home office. All you need is a table
and a chair in a corner of a room. With kids, I get it, but otherwise, what's
all that extra space going toward? Every "document" I own fits in a single
box. If anything, apartments will just become "Tokyo-ified".

> She never realised, before, how important it was to have good lighting, so
> she had spotlights installed in the ceiling and bought a proper desk lamp.

Ok, now you're jumping the shark. Nobody's installing track lighting just to
do computer work. One good desk lamp is all you need.

> She's near a big road and she needs to concentrate hard when she's working -
> sound-proofing is an issue she hadn't anticipated.

Headphones worked for the office, they work at home too.

~~~
riffic
isn't the insulation outside the ducts?

~~~
peterwwillis
Amazingly, no. Most commercial offices have fiberglass _inside_ the ducts
because it saves them more money. But the sealant breaks down over time and
air turbulence makes the fiberglass fly. Larger particles cause symptoms like
an allergic reaction, smaller particles can cause asbestosis if they are found
in large numbers, though estimates so far indicate this is unusual. But it
still seems stupid that we're pumping fiberglass throughout our offices. (To
say nothing of mold/mildew if the fiberglass gets wet...)

~~~
riffic
I did not know that and that's quite a scary thought.

------
ericmcer
This seems insanely over engineered, we are in the midst of the pandemic and
people are already acting like it’s over. I think things start going back to
normal the second corona runs it’s course or a vaccine appears.

I live in the Bay Area and was initially planning on joining the droves of
people going fully remote. On second thought I am going to stay, I would
rather have the bargaining chip of being one of the remaining local devs
instead of one of the growing army of fully remote programmers.

~~~
lr4444lr
With all due respect, what kind of bargaining chip is that gonna be if U.S.
dev work starts shifting to remote as the norm? Your higher cost of living in
the Bay Area would count against you.

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Many of the bigger companies are continuing to expand their office footprint
even though they have nobody in offices right now, and it’s very much
conventional wisdom among the people signing checks that in-person
collaboration makes a big difference. More companies are certainly getting
more friendly to it, but a near future where remote work is the default seems
very implausible.

