FROM THE EDITOR

Over the course of this year and since COVID-19 was officially labelled a pandemic, I've overheard and taken part in several conversations about what this period means for humanity, our planet and the future of cities, what we can learn and how or where to find silver linings. None of these conversations were as interesting as one I recently watched (and which we subsequently republished on our website): the second in the Bengal Institute's BI Between series, which aims to explore the critical spaces between architecture, landscape and city. In this conversation, the institute's director general, Bangladeshi architect and urbanist Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, spoke with architect, urban designer and conservationist Rahul Mehrotra of RMA Architects about the impact of COVID-19 and the future of cities in South Asia. I thought about the conversation a lot over the following weeks, in particular something Mehrotra said:

‘Resulting from the pandemic, the relationship between our home and the world is altering. It's a matter of what age and phase of life you're at, but I think the home actually became a very transient place. The access we had to the world, to the city and to engaging with other people created the illusion that the world was a stable entity and it was the home that was transient. But very quickly that has flipped completely. The home has become the most stable place. We are experiencing our homes in ways we've never done before. We have taken the home for granted; it has been the transient space in our lives, but now the world has become transient and the home has become the most stable entity, and by extension so has its locality. We're noticing our neighbourhoods more intensely, we're noticing things just across the street that hadn't registered before, we're noticing things in our own backyards. It's an interesting tension. You can't see it as a binary, it's never been a binary. There is always evolving tension between the home and the world, and a shifting set of relationships. And the tension involved in the way you place your home within the world has taken on a completely different dimension, because the presence of the home, the tactility of the home, the changing light qualities, the minute details that we weren't absorbing as much as we should have been — these have become what now inform our everyday experiences and our perceptions about life.'

I certainly couldn't have put this any better or more poetically, and I hope it gives you as much to think about as it did me.

Until next time, stay safe and well.