Rethink: 2025 - Design for life after Covid-19

Rethink: 2025 - Design for life after Covid-19 now is over!

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) is hosting its the Rethink: 2025 – Design for life after Covid-19, international call for ideas to discover what kind of a world might be coming.

Organiser invites all participants to submit a speculative proposition at any scale – in-detail or wide-ranging – that offers a positive and tangible response to one or more of the above issues or others arising from the pandemic:

What will your paradigm for living be? We want architects and students to consider life in 2025 and how the pandemic will have modified the way humans interact with space and one another, and how design can mitigate its worst effects.

Breathing space: We created new hospitals in two weeks. What will healthcare spaces look like in five years?

Schools out: Will remote learning become the norm? Will there be any more ‘gown’ in our ‘town’?

How will we live? Will home life become an increasingly atomised experience? Did the pandemic’s high death rates cause the death of high density?

What will be the future of work and our workspaces? What will be the new business as usual? Will we all be praying for the return of paternoster lifts?

Infrastructure and public realm: How will we move safely through the city? Will the commuter’s rush involve less crush? Will our parks and squares and roads reflect our new-found love of fresh air?

Window shopping? Did covid-19 finish off what online shopping started on the high street? If so, where do you now go to try before you buy?

Travel and tourism: Will we miss the plane but rediscover a love of trains? Will our long-haul world shrink and our seaside towns get an upgrade?

Soft power: Will track and trace apps make us slave to the nanny state or will technology offer a new, democratising potential?

Submission requirements:

➜ A maximum of 2 landscape sheets (equivalent to A3 in PDF format only)

➜ A written design statement in Word format (maximum 500 words) in support of the submission describing the approach and key points.
➜ In addition to the PDF of the design sheets 1 x visual image of the design concept should be provided for publicity purposes. The image should be representative of the ideas proposed and be readily identifiable as such. The image should be submitted in JPEG format, in a high resolution with an image width of at least 1000px.

➜ A 30 word summary in Word format to explain the visual image for publicity purposes.

➜ Optional: If desired a visual media presentation of up to 2minutes as a separate file (no larger than 10MB) may also be submitted but will not be used as part of the evaluation. It may however be used in subsequent publicity.

➜ Total upload should not exceed 30MB.

Evaluation criteria:

➜ Overall quality of the design approach and ideas that have the possibility to make a positive difference to post-pandemic life

➜ Response to the brief, including:

● Adaption to implications and fallout of Covid-19 and pandemic

● Mitigation of climate change

● Impact on quality of life

➜ Creativity and innovation

There is no entry fee to participate!

Who can participate? ⇣

Rethink: 2025 - Design for life after Covid-19 is open internationally to all RIBA members, from any category of membership including students.

Tags ⇣

Official website ⇣