The post-coronavirus pandemic home will have more walls, more porches, more flex rooms and dedicated office areas, plus tiny houses for mom and dad -…

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The post-coronavirus pandemic home will have more walls, more porches, more flex rooms and dedicated office areas, plus tiny houses for mom and dad

Your home has been called upon to play many different roles during the past few months of the coronavirus pandemic. Its been an office, schoolhouse, videoconference room, home gym and more.

Often, however, its performance has been lacking, thanks to slow internet service, uncomfortable seating and uncooperative co-workers (i.e. noisy children).

After spending so much time indoors during the pandemic, many people may want to upgrade their living space by rethinking their homes layout. Others may want to renovate their homes to take advantage of outdoor space or move to a new home that does.

Making these kinds of changes is a long, slow process, said Adam Reed, vice president at Ford Powell & Carson Architects & Planners. Were still in the midst of pandemic, so its too soon to know exactly what changes well see yet.

In recent years, the open floor plan, where the kitchen, dining room, living room and den were one uninterrupted, wall-free space, has been falling out of favor. The pandemic may hasten that trend.

In a home with two adults, several school-age children and, as has become commonplace, a boomerang adult child or two all living under one roof, finding someplace private to work has become important.

Many families may need several discrete places to work, architect Stephanie Eugster said. Its lovely that you get to spend most of the day with your family, but everyone needs a place for themselves.

While it is possible to build walls and hang doors to partition off spaces, Eugster said she doesnt see that happening very widely. Instead, the flex room may be the answer. A concept borrowed from office buildings, these are rooms that, with little effort, can be customized to serve multiple purposes.

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For example, the dining room, long on the outs in new builds, may make a comeback, serving as a workspace during the week and a place to entertain guests when home entertaining becomes a thing again. Or a home office located in a repurposed bedroom might be furnished with an easy-to-move desk so it can quickly be converted back to a bedroom for weekend guests.

With so many people living together, there may be a boom in soundproofing curtains, second walls, composite materials so mom or dad can take a Zoom meeting or conference call while young children are running around, predicted Kathryn ORourke, associate professor of art history at Trinity University.

She also speculated about new housing arrangements to provide a separate space for aging parents or adult children who have lost their jobs. These include more tiny houses or even shipping containers in suburban backyards. She also foresees more houses with wings that can be occupied semiprivately, while still connected to a common kitchen or dining area.

People may be rethinking domesticity in really interesting ways because of this pandemic, she said.

While its still early to know how, or even if, the pandemic will change what homebuyers look for in a new home, Kim Bragman said shes already seeing an uptick in interest in one area.

Couples who both work from home want dedicated office space, said Bragman, the chairwoman of the San Antonio Board of Realtors. Or at least an extra bedroom they can convert into an office.

COVID-19 fears also may result in a shift in the definition of luxury, according to Reed.

It might not mean installing the most beautiful of faucets in the master bath anymore, he said. Instead it might be a touchless faucet with a built-in filtration system.

This wont be the first time a disease has triggered substantial changes in residential architecture.

The tuberculosis epidemic of the 19th century and the 1918 influenza both spurred the creation of large sanatoria open to the outdoors so patients could get plenty of fresh air and sunlight, thought to be key to a patients recovery, ORourke said.

This open-air concept eventually spilled over into residential architecture.

You can see it in those large front porches built into so many homes from that time, she said.

Front porches have long been out of favor with developers. Few homes built since the 1950s have them. But the pandemic may change that as many people rediscover the simple joys of sitting on their porch, watching the world go by.

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After youve been living in your home or apartment for so many weeks, you appreciate being outdoors, even if its only sitting on a porch waving to your neighbors as they walk by on the street, said Ted Flato, partner at Lake | Flato Architects. Its an easy way to add more living space to your home.

Adding a porch to an existing home is simpler and less expensive than adding a heated and air-conditioned extension, such as a bedroom or den. The website Homeadvisors.com, which matches homeowners with contractors, estimates that a 200-square-foot covered porch will cost between $4,600 to $22,000, or an average of $10,500. That works out to $23 to $110 per square foot.

At the beginning of the pandemic, many people sent home to work plopped a computer onto their kitchen or dining room table and declared it an office. But those wholl be working from home for the foreseeable future may want to up their internet game.

Perhaps the best way to do this is to wire the home with Category 5, or Cat 5, cables. These are low-voltage wires that can be run through the walls, the attic or even the subflooring. They connect the router to the devices plugged into the network so you dont have to use Wi-Fi. The connection provides a faster, steadier and more secure signal, so colleagues will be less likely to freeze up during your next Zoom conference.

Weve been seeing a lot more new houses built with Cat 5 in recent years, said Irby Hightower, a senior principal at Alamo Architects, and homeowners are also installing the cables in existing homes.

Cat 5 also makes it easier to install and operate smart home devices that can be controlled over the internet, such as security cameras, lighting and door locks.

As more people work from home, this kind of technology will become a lot more prominent, Hightower said.

Multifamily apartments will pose their own challenges to post-pandemic architecture, said Rick Lewis, assistant professor in practice at the University of Texas at San Antonios College of Architecture, Construction and Planning.

You have between 300 and 500 people living in the kind of developments that have been going up in San Antonio over the past 10 years or so, he said. Social distancing is much harder here, especially in the public spaces.

Lewis said he foresees changes to building codes requiring an enlargement of so-called pinch points where people come in close contact to one another. These include mail areas, hallways and elevator waiting areas. He also said amenities such as party rooms, weight rooms and swimming pools may get smaller or even disappear if residents remain uncomfortable using them.

Therell be a lot of conversation about things like this among architects, urban planners and politicians in the coming years, he said.

Not everyone is convinced the pandemic will result in structural changes in residential architecture.

Weve had viruses in the past and, yes, this one is deeper, longer and with more consequences, architect Paul Franklin said. But Im not anticipating any permanent changes per se. I think this is largely a one-off thing.

And while home shoppers may be looking for different features today than they were four months ago, Bragman said that for most, their bottom line remains the same.

Until I see otherwise, todays buyers are looking for schools and amenities, same as they always have, she said.

rmarini@express-news.net

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The post-coronavirus pandemic home will have more walls, more porches, more flex rooms and dedicated office areas, plus tiny houses for mom and dad -...