Never let a good crisis go to waste. How residential architecture responds to health crises.

Previous health crises have impacted residential architecture and have led to higher housing standards in many countries with better daylight, sanitation, green areas and space per resident. While it may still be too early to determine whether and how the Covid-19 pandemic affects residential architecture, the recent pandemic provides an evident occasion to scrutinise the intricate relationship between major health crises and architectural change processes. The recent pandemic triggered what has been described as a situation of polycrises, where society is simultaneously destabilised from several different directions. However, several stakeholders stressed that crises may also be productive as turning points, opening new opportunities. In this paper, we analyse how previous health crises impacted Danish residential architecture throughout history and discuss how the Covid-19 pandemic currently impact residential architecture and design of urban neighbourhoods. Based on archival research into housing and public health policy and residential architecture from 1850 to the present, we analyse changes triggered by health crises in Copenhagen housing typologies. We relate this to recent architectural-anthropological studies of how new neighbourhoods in post-pandemic Copenhagen are developed and experienced.

Keywords: #housing #respond #health crises #epidemics #time