Post-pandemic transformation of residential architecture: Emerging design strategies and challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the transformation of residential architecture by requiring the home to accommodate work, education, leisure, social interaction, and health-related needs within the same environment. This paper presents a qualitative literature review examining how these changes have influenced residential design and the emerging understanding of housing resilience. The reviewed literature is critically synthesized through four interconnected thematic domains: spatial modularity and adaptability, digital infrastructure and smart housing systems, health-oriented and biophilic design, and sustainability and long-term residential resilience. The findings indicate that the pandemic did not introduce an entirely new set of architectural principles, but accelerated the relevance and convergence of previously established approaches to flexibility, environmental quality, technological integration, and sustainable design. Spatial modularity is identified as one strategy within the broader concept of residential adaptability rather than as a universal solution. The review further demonstrates that post-pandemic residential resilience depends on the interaction of spatial, technological, health-related, and environmental characteristics, while the feasibility of individual strategies remains conditioned by economic, spatial, technical, social, and regulatory constraints. The paper contributes an integrated four-domain framework for interpreting post-pandemic residential transformation and highlights the need for further empirical evaluation of these strategies across different housing types and contexts.