With the ongoing pandemic, people are more hesitant to eat in a restaurant and I was/am one of those people. I went to a Japanese restaurant on a Monday night to celebrate my birthday night out, and it had been 8 months since the last I dined in. The experience was not pleasant, and it was not due to the restaurant sanitation policy required by the state, or the new seating layouts. I chose to celebrate my birthday on a Monday night instead of a weekend due to my false expectation of “less people going out to eat on weekdays, especially in a pandemic” but that is not statistically correct. Overall, it was an invisible mental barrier I had in my mind when I saw people were maskless near me even though we were separated by plastic dividers between tables. This whole experience has made me come to a realization: dining indoors is not working for anxious people like me, and the question is how we can dine safely and support our local restaurants as much as possible.
There is an article about how eating at a restaurant could put you at high risk of getting affected by COVID-19 due to the ventilation systems, a major concern of dining out today. The study shows illustrated diagrams of how the direction of air flows can be a carrier that distributes the virus to the customers even if the seat distances are greater than 6 feet. (sourcehttps://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/12/19/metro/superspreader-destinations-what-makes-indoor-dining-during-covid-19-so-risky/).
So, how can we mitigate the situation as business owners, and what design strategies can we provide as architecture and interior designers?
The following diagrams are screenshots from the article I mentioned above.
As for business owners, there are some interventions of improving the safety of dining in that have been introduced such as : air purifiers, enhanced ventilation systems, hiring air quality consultants (source:https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/28/1011261/how-to-make-restaurants-safer/), or an affordable way to purchase a carbon dioxide monitor, as in the same article resource states that “If your levels stay below about 800-950 parts per million, ventilation is probably sufficient.” More importantly, using a reservation system might also help to minimize aerosol transmission, and that automatically comes up with a tracking system: if a customer is infected, restaurant owners would be informed, and they could then put into action contact tracing with the other customers, and conduct necessary precautions from spreading to other households.
It is interesting to see the air flow diagrams presented in a scientific study. As an architecture student I think that architects have an opportunity and responsibility to collaborate with mechanical engineers to create the safest, healthiest environments for people.
Another design solution is to extend the dividers between seats all the way up to ceilings so that the airflow might be able to be redirected. The image below was one of STA’s restaurant projects, and the placement of the dividers was a potential COVID layout to prevent interchangeable transmittance between customers.
I understand that it is not an obligation for citizens to report their health to other people, however, being affected by Covid-19 is not a personal issue anymore, it is a society’s health issue, and it ties to the entire community. All I would like to say is that we all share the same goal on ending this pandemic as soon as possible, and we should all work toward this together.
-Yingli
