This project was initially realized in the early stages of the pandemic and aimed to reconsider the organization of commercial streets. Two years later, we look back on this proposal and realize the relevance some of these concepts can still have in a post-pandemic world.
Our proposal rethinks the commercial street beyond its traditional compartmentalized and hierarchized layering of functional spaces. Instead, we move towards an alternate organization where these adjacent spaces interact to form a multifunctional ecosystem. Although such nontraditional commercial spaces exist in our cities, they remain a step away from becoming normative. Inspired by our observations of the consequential ad-hoc responses that emerged due to the pandemic within these spaces, we aim to outline the many benefits such an approach could have on the commercial street. Hence, our proposal consists of a partial physical reorganization and reconsideration of the street's various scales.
At the scale of the street, we first expand the space dedicated to pedestrians, proposing market-like pockets along the current middle street. We diminish the importance of the automobile but value maintaining it as an element.Despite its contentious presence in urban hubs, it remains valuable as it brings diverse and foreign interests to the commercial area. A medium for efficient consumption, a slow, one-way car lane gives access to a drive-through operated by adjacent restaurants, or collectives. The use of street furniture and infographics in the urban landscape allows both the implementation of sanitary initiatives and also the integration of a domestic feeling in newly reactivated places.
At the scale of street front businesses, we de-compartmentalize floor layouts. Such rigid organizations were centered around an ideal of efficiency which has become irrelevant in the recent pandemic context. To achieve the new distancing requirements between visitors, back stores and service spaces merged with the main areas where possible. Furniture is used as physical divisions between individuals. Circulations typologies (one-way, open loop) result from this action, leading to safer trajectories. Service exits are also leveraged as alternative access points for take-outs.
At the scales of the alleys, we reclaim the space for human activity as a complement or alternative to the busy street, de-clustering main arteries to create seamless transitions from street and shops to alleyways, or vice versa.

As interior functions permeate exterior landscapes, our proposal highlighted underutilized urban spaces, creating a network that includes them in order to redistribute commercial and cultural interests evenly across an urban block typology. The hope if for the linear relationship of the retail to the street to be dehierarchized. We can learn from architectural works that are primarily structured around organisation. Beyond the commercial street, methodologies must not only go through the sampling of people and their spaces, but more importantly their connections across the community. This model-unit presented speculations on ways of living with a pandemic. Now in the process of unearthing the new endemic world in which we will live, we must then look at the principles of the proposal and reflect on what is still relevant and what is no longer relevant. Our questions are to reflect on the status of what we once knew, and to prepare for the unlikely, if it happens again in the future.