The role of compulsory quarantine, housing design and urban furniture in Covid 19 disaster management. A personal Experience in Australia

The Australian Government has recently announced a compulsory two-week quarantine policy, from March 20th 2020, for all incoming passengers in the allocated hotels around the country. The Government, at the same time, has also restricted, seriously, for its citizens to travel abroad. Such measurements, among others, have been developed in order to eliminate the outbreak pandemic throughout the country. In this respect, the compulsory passengers’ settlements in hotels for 24 hours in 14 days, which has been rolled out as a law, requires to be reviewed and assessed in this paper. It is worth mentioning that, the country has experienced no Covid-19 cases, over the last months, and people live in a condition without wearing masks.

The author, who has recently experienced such an exceptional practice, describes his observations in a narrative research method. He also reviews the pandemic mitigation measurements allocated in the housing and urban spaces in the city of Sydney.

The present technical report has folded in two parts: First, it describes the process of transferring passengers, from the airport and the author’s day-to-day staying in the hotel.  Second, the paper suggests a number of urban furniture and housing redesign issues in mitigating the pandemic outbreak to be studied.

The report concludes that, authorities require not only take such tasks and responsibilities seriously, in an integrated and harmonized approaches, by controlling and managing the transferring passengers, the designers should also develop innovative ideas for post-pandemic housing. They may be as follows: flexible interior design, preventive measures of virus transition, multi-function balcony designs, and etc. In addition, urban areas should be equipped and redesigned by electronic sensor eyes and touch-less bottoms in elevators and crossroads. And also social distancing design in public and green spaces by considering various socio-cultural and environmental requirements.