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It’s up to everybody to adapt however, as the future remains terribly uncertain, not to mention what Brexit is going to throw at the industry in the coming months.
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The ONS reported that construction activity fell by nearly three per cent in December, the first decline since April for a sector that has seemed to ride out the stresses of the pandemic until now. The housing element has propped construction up, however, and with the end of the stamp duty holiday looming, its Covid-busting health appears to be dipping alarmingly.
With uncertainty being the on-trend flavour this year so far, and with commercial clients in particular unlikely to commit to projects, it’s going to be a bumpy ride for architects.
James Parker Editor
02.21
ON THE COVER... The dramatic curves of ZHA’s Beijing Daxing International Airport are as much the result of a need to provide maximum throughput, as aesthetic aspiration.
BEIJING DAXING INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, CHINA Despite its stunning form, the design of ZHA’s first completed airport was driven as much by super-efficient function as aesthetics
THE AABEN, HULME, MANCHESTER Mecanoo brings a human scale to high density social housing
Cover Image © Hufton+Crow For the full report on this project, go to page 28.
FROM THE EDITOR
T
his year continues with a depressingly familiar feel, presenting little more concrete than a series of questions about when, but more often than not, if, life is ever going to return to normal.
Depending on who you ask, some architects are anticipating a return to the office once, as we have to hope, the vaccines begin to suppress the spread of this resilient, and worryingly quick-to-mutate, virus. Others have accepted that they will be working from home for the foreseeable future, meaning years possibly, not months.
While this might be good news for the environment, and for the pocket of those forced to shell out large sums for public transport, it’s not going to be easy to confront a future without face-to-face client meetings, for example. In a seemingly frivolous example, the recent Texas lawyer going viral in a Zoom case with an animated cat where his face should be, actually shows the real risks to credibility of relying on apps and online networks to support your often critical and delicately balanced business operations.
You can ride the balance of such situations much more easily when you can read people’s expressions in the flesh, and understand that they are perceiving the humour in such a situation, for example. The simple fact is that we need to get accustomed to navigating around such glitches, much as in the ‘past’ we’d have to show flexibility when the Underground (or perhaps our ability to find our way around a city) let us down.
It’s a sad fact (and I confess I may be part of the problem here), that a certain couple of generations in the middle-aged and above bracket might be able to surf these new waters less adeptly than colleagues many years younger. Twenty-somethings are more likely to have been working with apps, not to mention multi- tasking across several IT platforms, their whole professional lives, so the new realities are less likely to cause them the consternation that Texan lawman, albeit in cat form, clearly experienced.
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