According to the United Nations Secretary-General, the coronavirus pandemic is the “greatest test” the world has faced since the United Nations was formed in the wake of the Second World War. One of the results of that global war was the ascendancy of modernist architecture, which until then had been a distinctly Bohemian side show of little import. It was not until the postwar 1950s that steel and glass office towers and precast concrete housing blocks appeared—and came to dominate the built environment. One wonders if a post-pandemic world will see a comparable phenomenon. Of course, a plague does not materially lay waste cities, but its debilitating social, economic, and human effects could be as drastic.
Maybe it’s not too much to ask for another renaissance. It has happened before. Check out the new Portland Building:
http://www.portlandarchitecture.com/
The 1527 Sack of Rome was followed by the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, and the Baroque. So anything is possible.