While most office-bound people are currently sitting at home in their home office, work on the construction site continues as usual. Our author Mark Kammerbauer reflects on the extraordinary and the self-evident, on normality and exception – and what architects are contributing to overcoming the crisis. The crisis is here, we are all experiencing it and are […]
While most office-bound people are currently sitting at home in their home office, work on the construction site continues as usual. Our author Mark Kammerbauer reflects on the extraordinary and the self-evident, on normality and exception – and what architects are contributing to overcoming the crisis.
The crisis is here, we are all experiencing it and are affected by it in many different ways. The state responses to it vary from nation to nation, but what they mostly have in common is restricting physical contact and virus-related transmission routes in public spaces. This is generally summarized under the term “social distancing”. This has led many scientists in my social media environment to point out that it is more a matter of “spatial distancing”. In other words, spatial distancing, because social contacts are still possible. This statement is all the more true when working from home under quarantine-like conditions. It is not for nothing that some teleconferencing software is currently experiencing its 15 minutes of fame.
In fact, this period will probably last a little longer than 15 minutes. What is already clear is that the lockdown is bringing many sectors of the economy to a standstill and forcing them to make adjustments. Restaurants are preparing food for takeaway. Airlines are receiving state aid. Creative people are and will remain creative and will also hopefully receive aid if necessary. But what about the construction sites? After all, they are an important arena for the work of architects. Conversations with architects in my personal circle of friends have made me realize this: On the construction site during the crisis is before the crisis – or, possibly, after the crisis. In other words, there doesn’t seem to be a lockdown on the construction site.
This realization came en passant, because you don’t call your friends and ask, “Are you also going to your construction site?” Rather, you want to know if they are healthy. Then suddenly, in a subordinate clause, “I’m on the building site at the moment, by the way.” This subordinate clause reveals that what is taken for granted is, well, taken for granted. In the current situation, however, the self-evident is the extraordinary, and that is quite remarkable. Or, in another phone call: “We’re getting lots of inquiries about changes of use at the moment.” You can guess what that means: the existing tenants will probably not be able to sit out the crisis in their current rented premises. Which points to a broader set of social, economic and, not least, political circumstances surrounding the Covid-19 crisis.
Death metal records help, but life goes on
How long will the lockdown continue? A look at Austria is revealing here. Only recently, the social partners in the construction industry reached an agreement on an eight-point catalog of stricter protective measures for all those involved on construction sites. The union had called for a construction site shutdown due to a lack of guidelines on how to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. The measures agreed include increased occupational hygiene, organizational measures or protection during activities that require distances of less than one meter. The Austrian social partners are an association of various stakeholders, including the trade union and the Chamber of Commerce, comparable to the German social partnership and the parties to collective agreements.
Within my own four walls, the Dahoam office is currently the middle section of a construction site sandwich: in the basement, concrete walls are being diligently sawn up to create new passageways; the laundry room, which was previously located in the attic, is moving there to make way for new apartments at the top. My old death metal records help against the noise. And as Entombed used to say: “But life goes on.” So if lockdown is the norm and building site operations are the exception, at least the architects can claim to be doing their bit to overcome the crisis – without any pathos. And in the same tone of voice, to everyone involved in the construction industry: master the crisis, stay healthy.
Tip from the STEIN editorial team:
You can also find this and similar articles, which may be of interest to architects and everyone else involved in the construction industry, in the newly created online home office special from our colleagues at the architecture magazine Baumeister. In addition to our STEIN Corona industry ticker at www.stein-magazin.de/corona-was-nun on current economic and work organization developments here on the homepage, the Baumeister editorial team now offers a free daily home office special newsletter with construction and architecture stories. You can subscribe here: https: //www.baumeister.de/homeoffice-spezial/
