A Mixed Approach on Resilience of Spanish Dwellings and Households during COVID-19 Lockdown

Abstract

The confinement by COVID-19 has meant a re-reading of housing for Spanish households, resulting in the only available and safe space to carry out daily activity. This complex phenomenon has generated a completely different way of inhabiting it, as well as of relating to domestic spaces. For this reason, the home perception and its characteristics must be evaluated, highlighting those perceived as deficiencies, or as preferences in such an unusual context as lockdown, where the experience was different depending on the dwelling characteristics, and the family in question. To deepen in this double perception home-dwelling, a mixed method was used, with two online forms. The first is a quantitative questionnaire, while the second asks the participants for photographs and narratives about such images. More than 1800 surveys and 785 qualitative responses were obtained. From both approaches, the joint discourse arose, allowing an exploratory analysis of the current situation of the Spanish residential park, and the resilience demonstrated in this period by both households and their usual dwellings. This study should facilitate the development of new proposals on housing in contexts similar to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Confinement, Comfort and Health: Analysis of the Real Influence of Lockdown on University Students during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…The scientific community specialised in studying dwellings now has the opportunity and the obligation to rethink the relation between medicine and architecture, and more specifically, between the day-to-day human habitat and health [ 18 ]. It is therefore appropriate to reappraise the aspects related to interior comfort in homes both for normal use and the more specific use that has arisen as a result of the lockdown [ 19 ].…”

Behavior Patterns, Energy Consumption and Comfort during COVID-19 Lockdown Related to Home Features, Socioeconomic Factors and Energy Poverty in Madrid

“…Energy consumption increased during confinement, which seems obvious [1]. The increase in the use of some equipment was related to the female gender, employment situation and age.…”

“…Although this study was originally part of a project at the national level [1], approximations at the city level allowed for the establishment of another, different analysis by cross-referencing this information with variables from secondary data at the neighbourhood or district scale, compensating for the initial lack of home-income information. This would allow differences and nuances of the sample to be observed, therefore enriching the information obtained.…”

“…The public health measures established at the global level have been based, to a greater or lesser extent, on confinements to isolate the population and protect it against SARS-CoV-2. This situation has led to a concentration of household tasks, both daily and extraordinary, with housing becoming the nerve center of human activity for most households around the world [1]. This has brought with it numerous consequences on a social and economic, but also environmental, level.…”

Confined Students: A Visual-Emotional Analysis of Study and Rest Spaces in the Homes

“…During the confinement for COVID-19, dwellings have apparently become a refuge for households, where people could carry out all the daily tasks but in totally unusual circumstances [ 8 ]. Depending on home characteristics and those of their spaces, they have brought with them very different sensations and emotions [ 9 ], from positive [ 10 ] to negative ones [ 11 ], even being able to develop or aggravate different mental illnesses, putting at greater risk the situation of vulnerability of many of these households [ 12 ].…”