Design Strategies for Re-Thinking School Environments Post-Covid

With the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic, a number of critical issues emerged related to the worldwide shortage of adequate facilities to handle an emergency of such severity. Public buildings, due to their strategic role in contemporary society, present great challenges in terms of spatiality, functionality and logistics. The pandemic’s speed and gravity did not lead to timely operational arrangements, particularly with regard to the most crowded buildings. This is the case of school buildings, which, due to their use, are considered places of high pandemic proliferation. That is why action protocols have imposed physical distancing, with the aim of reducing the contagion risk. For this reason, from the very beginning, the most common strategies in the world of education included the stopping of in-presence service delivery, favouring the use of remote connection. The objective of this paper is to identify design parameters for the construction of new school structures or for the adaptation of existing school structures, in order to allow the continuity of teaching functions even under secure conditions. To this end, the research starts by comparing the directives and regulations implemented by a number of European countries on the basis of organisational and behavioural criteria in order to ensure that teaching activities can be carried out in complete safety. This preventive survey provides basic information which, by virtue of the specific conditions of applicability, can be deepened to evolve into behavioural, technological or spatial-functional indications in order to adapt school services and spaces in the event of future needs.