The Interactive Architecture for the Improvement of Urban Health during COVID-19 Crisis: A Review

The damages of COVID-19 to people's lives have highlighted the need for the usage of technologies to improve health. For this purpose, the identification of available technologies could facilitate the fight against COVID-19. This manuscript aims to explore the effective technologies existing in the literature on Interactive Architecture because these technologies are embedded in the daily life of individuals to respond to the real-time needs of people. Therefore, we conducted a scoping review in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, with no time and paper type limitations. Selected papers were categorized based on their content. Also, the guidelines for combating COVID-19 (based on the WHO and the national government tips) were reviewed and categorized. Afterward, the papers that shared the same themes by guidelines were selected to extract the technologies introduced in them. Finally, usage has been proposed for each of the technologies. Also, we examined the effectiveness of the technologies in the proposed sectors by asking about the experts' viewpoints. As result, we found that interactive ventilation, flexible walls, and eHealth technologies could be effective for the promotion of physical health during COVID-19. In that vein, interactive installations (such as interactive furniture) could improve mental health during quarantine by extending the space and providing the opportunity to connect with the outside world. Also, the virtual education environment was the most effective technology for education challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.