HEALING - Alternative Designs for Quarantine Cities

Our world is changing fast, while ambitions and challenges match in importance. In this context, design can play a huge role. How do we imagine the world to be? What range of possibilities we haven’t discovered yet? What’s a Non-Architecture for a World in crisis? In 2020 we started the second phase of competitions to address the issues of tomorrow.

In line with our style we propose 9+1 themes – ten critical topics to work on, but this time they come with a framework to make sure that each theme is explored from different design angles. Rather than a program, a research ecosystem composed of various competitions running in parallel and exploring the same theme from different perspectives.

Our exploration journey will start from a theme zero, a special step in our research program: Pandemic Society.

In this competition, we ask you come up with visionary concepts for alternative urban life in relation to the COVID-19 emergency – Only 3 drawings, absolute freedom of scale, site or program. You are asked to reimagine urban life through a variety of creative design concepts and ideas.

Cities have historically been hubs for ideas, commerce, culture, science, productivity, social connections, and much more. While being the core of global development, they have faced considerable challenges, becoming the main stage to experience tangible consequences of our society’s biggest criticalities, like scarcity of resources, climate change, natural disasters, health, ecosystems loss, epidemics, education, crime, and poverty.

Their central role in human civilization is expected to gain further relevance since the United Nations predicts that by 2050 two thirds of the world population will be living in urban areas. What kind of role can we play as designers in reimagining urban life? How can we produce new inspiring visions to trigger a discussion around alternative models of urban living?

HEALING –Alternative Designs for Quarantine Cities aims to answer those questions with a particular focus on the current emergency related to the COVID-19 outbreak.

www.nonarchitecture.eu/healing