Architects have an important role to play in making societies more resilient to the threat of future health crises, write Diego S Silva, Enya Moore and Chris L Smith.

It's now six years since the world was turned upside down by Covid-19. In February of this year, the World Health Organisation issued a plea to all governments, partners and stakeholders: "Do not drop the ball on pandemic preparedness and prevention."

Make no mistake: architects and designers are key stakeholders in pandemic responses. Their understanding of how built environments are designed, experienced and governed is critical during extended public health emergencies.

The architecture of the Covid-19 pandemic responses alternated between places of care and a medium for control

Keeping people and communities safe in place requires a multi-sectoral, interdisciplinary approach. One thing is clear: architects and public health officials must work together to prepare for the next pandemic. But is pandemic preparedness and prevention on the agenda?

Historically, emergency responses within the built environment have followed a cycle of reaction, repression and repetition. Each crisis is addressed as if novel; lessons embedded in design and planning practices fade from view, and similar challenges re-emerge in subsequent events.

Examples include the architectural response to the 21st century sub-prime mortgage crisis in the US, which was enacted as if there hadn't been a post-war housing crisis 50 years earlier. Or the automotive town industry crises, where architects rallied internationally in a series of projects centred upon industrial transformation, again, with little reference to the industrial transformations of the past.

All scales of adaptive strategy were enacted during the pandemic: classrooms and community halls were adapted for isolation or emergency use; car parks and shopping centres were repurposed as testing or vaccination sites; hotels served as quarantine centres. Yet it's not clear whether the lessons learned during the immediate response – ones that momentarily reconfigured our relationship with the built environment – are here to stay, or will once again be forgotten.

One of the main lessons is that places we inhabited during the pandemic, which affected how we coped with public health responses to the pandemic (e.g. lockdowns) were differentially felt depending on one's socio-economic standing in a given society. People living in buildings with access to outdoor space fared better than those who did not, for example.

The architecture of the Covid-19 pandemic responses alternated between places of care and a medium for control. We saw hotel accommodation open to the homeless, just as we saw apartment buildings locked down, shutting those who lived there inside.