Quarantine rooms, antimicrobial paint on the walls, and rounded corners in toilet cubicles are among the recommendations in a proposed building standard for reshaping offices in order to beat the threat of coronavirus.
Inspired by technologies and facilities used in hospitals, the proposals by the president of the European Property Federation are designed to allow the safe return of staff to work.
These include the installation of a fully-equipped room close to reception where a person who is taken ill at work could isolate; hospital-grade air filtration systems for meeting rooms, cafeterias and other communal areas; and rounded corners in toilet cubicles to minimise bacterial deposits.
The “IMMUNE” building standard developed by Liviu Tudor, head of the EPF, a Brussels-based trade group for property companies, consists of more than 100 measures that can be added to existing buildings or installed during construction.
Tudor hopes the EU will adopt the measures as a new building standard for the region, although he warns the process can take several years.
“Safety measures such as physical distancing and PPE applied in the current context within office buildings and other built environments do not hold long-term viability for business and offices to operate to capacity,” Tudor said.
“As we enhance our immune system, so too we should strengthen the immunity of our buildings by rethinking how they are designed, constructed, maintained and run.”
Tudor began researching the project in April, and his team is installing the new features in office buildings owned by his firm, Genesis Property, in Bucharest, Romania, where 35,000 square metres (377,000 sq ft) of space are being rented by international banks, including the French lender Société Générale, US-headquartered Citi, Spain’s BBVA, and Greece’s Alpha Bank.
The retrofitting is expected to take about six weeks to complete, and Tudor hopes the banks might choose to roll the measures out globally.
