Home•Ly

Description

THE PROBLEMS

In the contemporary world inundated with increasingly challenging socio-cultural phenomena, there are many issues that complicate the typical convention of Home: radical changes to traditional family structures and values; economy-driven mass (im)migrations that dynamically shift the urban vs. rural demographics and trigger housing crises; extreme urban density that induces blurred boundaries between private homes and public spaces; war-torn ethnic populations that are entirely displaced from homeland and implanted in foreign soils; human relationships that are more and more digitally connected yet more and more geographically distant; the new nomadic lifestyle that finds home wherever wireless connection is; homes and settlements world over that are in need of resettlement to evade natural disasters and effects of climate change.  And this is not all.

In this competition, we ask: 

• How does the definition of Home change under these circumstances? 
• How does the design community address and respond to such changes, in the way that improves human living conditions (and keeps the profession relevant)? 
• How can the ordinary – the homely — be the genesis of design interventions that have extraordinary, positive impacts on neighborhoods and cities? 
• How can the mundane – baan baan in Thai - conditions of Home become an agent that bridges the disconnection between the design profession and the general public?