Novel has launched an ideas competition, titled "Creativity for New Hygienism". How can innovation, architecture and design protect us from pandemics? 

This competition is an invitation to come up with innovative proposals capable of responding to the health crisis we are going through and those we may encounter tomorrow.  

Presentation

The stakes of the competition in detail. It is now more than a century since humanity has experienced a health crisis as great as covid-19. Combined with hyper-globalization, this pandemic has now almost totally paralyzed our activities, be they economic, social or cultural. At a time when half of the world's population is confined and a return to normality seems far away, it seems essential to us to imagine, to bring out and to promote the ideas that will set the health and hygiene challenges of tomorrow.  

Born in the middle of the 19th century, the hygienist movement revolutionized practices by applying to them the great scientific and medical discoveries of the time made by researchers such as Louis Pasteur and Antoine Lavoisier. On an urban and architectural scale, one can think in particular of Haussmann's work in Paris in the 19th century, which enabled entire districts to escape the insalubrity of the city's districts, or the work of architects such as Alvar Aalto and Le Corbusier in the 20th century, who tackled the challenges of health and architecture by placing the body, air and sun at the heart of their designs. 

This same period saw innovations in the field of science and technology with the appearance of new processes such as Pasteurisation, the creation of new medical equipment carried by great patrons such as Henri de Rothschild.  Let us mention, in a jumble, and without exclusivity, Patrice Bourdelais, Georges Vigarello, Bernard-Pierre Lecuyer or Claire Salomon-Bayet on hygienists, Caroline Moriceau, Geneviève Massard-Guilbaud, Vincent Viet on industrial pollution and hygiene, Sabine Barles and André Guillerme on metabolism and urban miasmas, Olivier Faure and Yannick Marec on medicine and assistance, François Ewald, Pierre Rosanvallon and Paolo Napoli on the welfare state and administration, and Alessandro Stanziani on food safety. At that time, public health was defined as a related set of disciplines including medicine, pharmacy, chemistry, civil and military engineering, architecture, public administration, statistics, technology and political economy. 

Today, we can also link the environment, innovation, culture and the social sciences. It is now certain that the pandemic we are experiencing will have a lasting impact on our societies. We can imagine that the necessary deconfinement that will take place in the coming weeks will be accompanied by the emergence of a new hygienic trend. What will be the impact of this crisis at all levels? How will health security, in the broadest sense, develop in the coming years? What will be the new protections and limits of our environments? These are the various issues that we invite you to think about!  

Schedule

Registration deadline: April 20, 2020 (09:58 AM)

Submission deadline: May 20, 2020 (09:58 AM)

Price

Price: Free

Prizes

Innovation winner for the Territory: $1,640
- The publication of the project
- Connecting with partners
- A certificate of participation recognizing the quality of the work carried out

Innovation winner for Architecture: $1,640
- The publication of the project
- Connecting with partners
- A certificate of participation recognizing the quality of the work carried out

Innovation for Design winner: $1,640
- The publication of the project
- Connecting with partners
- A certificate of participation recognizing the quality of the work carried out

Read details about the competition here. 

Top image © Coop Himmelblau

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