AIA offers strategies for retrofitting multifamily housing for pandemic use

The latest building adaptation report from the American Institute of Architect (AIA) highlights steps that building owners and designers can take to retrofit existing multi-family homes for pandemic occupation. Following recently published guides for schools, offices, and hospitals, AIA has issued its latest set of recommendations, titled Strategies for Safer Multifamily Housing, offering "guidance on how to combine new daily habits, the needs of workers, and stringent hygiene regimens with social, infrastructural, and spatial requirements that aim to keep everyone safe." The guide offers a collection of strategies for bringing stronger safety precautions to multi-family spaces, including reconfiguring shared entry and package delivery spaces, reconsidering "building flow and user experience" from shared entries to elevators and hallways, as well as thoughts on how units themselves might be redesigned to accommodate the crush of overlapping uses that must now take place within the ...