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This report looked at the design quality of our home environments, neighbourhoods and our sense of community during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Overview

From the 23rd March 2020 the UK was put into lockdown in an unprecedented attempt to fight the spread and impact of Covid-19. Initially the British public were under strict instructions to remain at home, and only to venture out when absolutely necessary for food, medicine or daily exercise. Until a gradual easing began from the 10th May onwards, families, couples, sharers, and individuals were spending more time at home – and together – than ever before.

The period of lockdown provided a unique opportunity to stress test our homes and their immediate environments, to gauge how they performed during this period, whether or not they supported our everyday needs in these strangest of times, and how we might need to design them or adapt them in the future to build in a greater resilience and capacity to support happy and healthy lives.

In order to get a picture of how well or poorly the design of our home environments were supporting us, a short non targeted survey was prepared. A total of 2510 responses were collected from across the UK with the resulting report focussing on the home during lockdown, our neighbourhoods during lockdown and our sense of community during that period.

This project ran from April 2020 to October 2020.

People

Professor Matthew Carmona (Lead PI), The Bartlett School of Planning
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Valentina Giordano, The Bartlett School of Planning
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Garima Nayyar, Place Alliance

Jessica Kurland, The Bartlett School of Planning

Clare Buddle, Place Alliance

Funder

Urban Design Group

Good Homes Alliance

Outputs

Carmona M, Giordano V, Nayyar G, Kurland J & Buddle C (2020) Home Comforts, How the design of our homes and neighbourhoods effected our experience of the Covid-19 lockdown and what we can learn for the future, London, Place Alliance,

Related links

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Photo by Matthew Carmona