'THE UP-HIGH STREET'- RETHINK: 2025 DESIGN FOR LIFE AFTER COVID-19 RIBAJ COMPETITION 2020

The RIBA Journal released an additional brief to their usual annual competitions titled: ‘Rethink 2025- Design for life Post Covid-19’. The brief called upon members to imagine a new post or inter-pandemic paradigm and the architectural manifestations that play a role in this. 
My entry was also submitted as part of an In-University brief revisiting the All School Project on the changing shape of High-streets for the future, which evidently had completely new factors and limitations to consider. My design therefore centered around a particular High Street – Northenden, Manchester, a typical representation of the ‘dying’ high-street, plagued with betting shops and pound-stores. 
My vision took a Dystopian approach reflective of the possibility of a new Pandemic prone era in which measures of social distancing becoming permanent in our architecture and urban landscapes and dictate our daily routine. The ‘Up-High’ is a response to progressive provocations, with regressive architecture, using the precedent of streets in the sky but in a new form as a foot-traffic and distancing regulator in towns and cities. These raised streets, are monitored and traffic lighted alike to a road to manage pedestrian traffic in urban centres and in the same way they were once intended to separate people from vehicles, they now separate people from other people. My images reflect an experimental collaging style of presentation and nods to the regressive nature of this new architecture in the use of vintage images and icons. 
The larger map image indicates other measures of change in architecture for a inter-pandemic future. Aircrafts/ drones become means of contactless delivery an the element of high street shopping also completely diminishes. Schools implement separators such as movable clear screens and two meter wide ‘hula-hoops’ to regulate safe playtime. Parks are marked to keep leisure seekers apart and dining in a dome becomes common place, as the restaurant fragments into individual dining zones and pods.