After the spring lockdown, apartment buyers pay attention to new risks and want to be well prepared for mobility restrictions. Echo Investment answers their needs by offering solutions that increase the level of safety and help them work from home.

The COVID-19 pandemic has verified our habits and usage of space – especially public places. After several weeks of analyzing attitudes and needs of urban dwellers, Echo Investment decided to adapt its residential projects to the new conditions. The developer’s architects are changing their residential projects in such a way as to make them safer, more comfortable and better prepared for similar threats in the future.

“The experience of the pandemic has made our clients more aware of safety issues, but we also want space users of places we create to be safe and comfortable in them. Together with designers and client advisors we analyzed  ways of using our buildings and potential risky spots. Then we developed and implemented a set of new activities and design guidelines related to safety. These are often solutions that we have paid less attention to before, and are and were simple ways to improve safety and make cleaning easier. Implementing them usually required a change in the way of thinking about designing rather than large financial or organizational outlays,” explains Waldemar Olbryk, Member of the Management Board of Echo Investment responsible for the residential sector.

What will make Echo Investment's clients better secured in case of a potential epidemiological risk, having to work from home or mobility restrictions?

“The basic thing is hygiene. In addition to recommending systematic disinfecting, we decided to reduce the need to touch things in common areas: halls, corridors or staircases. Therefore, residents of  the Reset II residential estate in Warsaw and Stacja 3.0 in Wrocław will be able to download to their smartphones a special application that will identify them, automatically open a door for them and call a lift that will take them to their floor. We are also considering the possibility of installing lamps disinfecting common areas with UV rays, but this will depend on agreement with future residents. We have devoted a lot of energy to makit easier for people to live a comfortable life, despite possible restrictions. In buildings that have areas to share, like a residents' club, we have proposed to arrange small working spaces. Residents who will not be able to go to their office and do not want to work at their own place will benefit from community  workspaces. We have been already implementing such a solution in Stacja Wola II in Warsaw and Esencja in Poznań,” enumerates Waldemar Olbryk.

Other solutions that help you to function comfortably in your apartment and in your residential estate are external washbasins or containers with disinfectant, especially useful at playgrounds, or a social application that allows you to communicate with your neighbours (it can also be used by administration staff to notify about your rent and other organizational matters). Several weeks of the lockdown in March and April also made us aware of the need to use  open-air spaces. This is the ultimate reason for Echo Investment's designers to ensure that each apartment has a large and comfortable loggia, terrace or balcony designed. In order to prepare an apartment for many functions, we also offer our clients services of experienced interior architects, who will help them to optimally design their space so that, if necessary, a home office can be created in it. We also pay a lot of attention to the issue of reminding about new rules of conduct, that have not yet fully become our second nature. To this end, we have developed a set of positive posters, instructions and murals that remind about hygiene rules or recommend certain actions - such as using stairs.

“World experts analysing the impact of the pandemic on social spaces believe that modern cities should be designed in such a way as to enable people to do all the important things within walking distance. This is how Echo Investment creates its multifunctional projects, that we call 'destinatons'. The epidemic is a completely new experience for our society and requires all those who contribute to the creation of social spaces to think about completely new aspects of its functioning. That is why we have devoted so much time to the analysis of post-COVID-19 solutions and their implementation in our residential projects, but also in office or retail ones,” says Waldemar Olbryk.

Echo Investment implements post-COVID-19 solutions as far as possible in case of already finished projects, as well as buildings that are at an early stage of their construction or even design. The first results will be visible as early as in the third quarter of 2020, when the Reset II project in Warsaw will be put into use, offering applications that can lead a resident to their premises without any contact, or then in Stacja 3.0 in Wrocław.