The rise of blocked-off design

Plexiglass bubbles hover over diners’ heads in restaurants. Plastic pods, spaced six feet apart, separate weightlifters in gyms. Partitions of all kinds are creeping up in workplaces.

As offices, restaurants, bars and businesses reopened after months of lockdowns and closures, a new phenomenon emerged, one that I’ve come to think of as ‘blocked-off design’. It’s design and layout that aims to construct and enforce distancing in a somewhat makeshift way. It’s characterised by partitions, sheer walls, six-foot markers. As a visual language, it’s defined by barriers and blockage — physical reminders that spaces where we once went to mingle with others are now fraught, and that even in public, isolation is necessary.

The objects and design solutions for this new market range from the totally absurd — massive hooped skirts with diameters of six feet — to the practical and even old-fashioned, like the installation of walls in office places. ‘You’re kind of seeing the resurrection of the cubicle,’ said Paul Ferro, CEO at Form4, an architecture firm that is working with clients including Google on physical plans for bringing workers back into their offices. (Not necessarily in the near-term: Google announced that employees won’t be forced to return to offices until July 2021.)

Ferro noted that it may not exactly be cubicles as usual, and that the plans include experimental designs that would also try to limit exposure from all sides and address the potential of aerosol transmission of the coronavirus. ‘Imagine a cubicle that goes up to five or six feet, and then imagine attaching a canopy over that as well,’ Ferro said. ‘In an environment where you don’t necessarily want to build from a permanent point of view, we’re asking vendors to think about creating an attached element.’