Coronavirus – While scientists, doctors, and nurses form the first line of defense, the pandemic urges the architecture and design community to brainstorm and work together to find solutions to COVID-19.
- RELATED STORIES: how can architecture and design contribute to fight Coronavirus?
Global Grad Show: an open call for students
Global Grad Show, Dubai Design Week international platform for the next generation of designers, invites graduates, undergraduates and professors from all disciplines, academic institutions and countries to submit solutions “that enhance the efficiency of home-quarantine, increase treatment capacity and screening methods, mitigate contagious behaviors at personal and public level, enable collaborative disease data collection and processing.” Register HERE.
Submissions will be evaluated by a panel of experts in health, innovation and technology. Selected proposals will be supported through an acceleration programme and may be further funded to be produced and distributed at scale. Creator will be awarded a scholarship covering the annual tuition fee for the selected student or establishing a research scholarship of equivalent value for the department of the selected professor.
Dezeen’s Virtual Design Festival offers a digital platform for innovators
On April 15, Dezeen’s will launch Virtual Design Festival, the world’s first online design festival and platform for companies, students, and institutions eager to launch their new products or projects as major fairs have been canceled globally.
“Are you helping to fight Coronavirus? This stage is for you and it’s free.” Explain at Dezeen. “All you need is an idea for how you can share your good work in a digital format that we can embed or share.”
Carlo Ratti invites architects and engineers to implement its open-source COVID-19 containers’ project
CRA – Carlo Ratti Associati and a global team of innovators has developed – and is currently testing – the first units of the open-source project CURA: a modular solution transforming shipping containers into intensive care pods [Read more on Archipanic]. Each unit could be as fast to mount as a hospital tent, but as safe as an isolation ward and it can be deployed in few hours. The pods can be connected by an inflatable structure to create multiple modular configurations in order to create self-standing field hospitals of varying sizes.
Developed non-profit and in an open-source way, the CURA project invites further contributions and suggestions. More information can be found at www.CURApods.org.
Fountain of Hygiene competition by Bompass and Parr to rethink sanitizer pumps
Bompas & Parr, the London-based food design and architecture studio feeding both minds and stomachs, has invited creatives, designers, makers and architects to design inspired takes on the sanitiser pumps, now difficult to find on counters across the globe. “The open competition seeks to encourage use of sanitising alcohol gels in both the public and domestic realms.” explain Sam Bompass and Harry Parr.
A panel of distinguished judges are selecting some most clever submissions which were supposed to be displayed at London’s Design Museum – now closed after the country went into lockdown – and auctioned by Christie’s to raise money for The British Red Cross. An online display is being developed in parallel as an alternative.