Hannah Corlett is hopeful that coronavirus will force us to question old habits and embrace a more flexible and frugal way of life.

Working from the ex-council house I share with my two teenage children has been an experience that I wouldn’t have been without, although I appreciate that it’s come at a cost.

Ten years ago I bought an abandoned garden attached to an ancient wood which just happened to have a 70 sq metre house there too. We call it the island as it’s designed to turn its back on the street and celebrate the natural isolation we overlook when facing south toward the wood, cemetery and allotments beyond.

Practice, teaching and a woeful attempt at home-schooling have all been undertaken from the vantage point of our oversized dining table, where we have watched the seasons unfurl and chatted about everything and nothing. I know I am lucky and I may never have been busier, yet contemplation has crept in at any chance it had.

As an urban designer and architect I live in semi-constant frustration that our discipline doesn’t keep pace with our species, and that the changes in knowledge, science and technology we bring about aren’t mapped swiftly in our built environments. I am always striving to take design back to first principles, to understand what is necessity and what is convention.

There can be no doubt that the coronavirus will fundamentally change the way we live and work. It should. We needed to question old habits. For too long, little or no flexibility has been built into the structure of our lives and our rigid systems failed to adapt to our changing needs, even before this pandemic.

This was the push we required to reshape the way we work, where people shrink down to what they need, when they need it, sharing space flexibly. This, in turn, will reap other overdue benefits with regard to flexible working conditions for families and those with disabilities.

I hope, as we have seen the environment thrive with our confinement, our excessive existence will also become much more frugal – spatially, materially and with regard to travel.

Hannah Corlett
North London