The RSA has just launched its 2017 Student Design Awards.  There are 12 challenges for students to choose from and Aspire is very pleased to be actively supporting the “Inclusive Living” challenge which asks students to "design and develop a proposal for inclusive living that challenges the current way we design our homes".

The competition is open to students and graduates of all built environment disciplines.  Entries must contain proposals that respond to changing social structures and family circumstances and foster positive intergenerational connections.  We are very pleased to have contributed resources to the “Inclusive Living” toolkit to help entrants understand more fully the scope and nature of the challenge and inform their design thinking.  We are also very much looking forward to participating in the judging for this award.

Another of the challenges we are particularly interested in is “#HackOnWheels” for which students are invited to design a visionary, customisable, user-centred wheelchair for the #HackOnWheels library of open source designs.  Open to all design disciplines, entries should respond to one of two themes:

1. “Want your wheels” invites entrants to consider how wheelchairs can be desirable, aspirational lifestyle products          

2. “Wear your wheels” invites entrants to design a modular system of interchangeable wheelchair parts that enables users to tailor their wheelchair to their body, lifestyle and environment.

Designers are advised to draw upon the expertise of wheelchair users to develop their ideas, so if you are a wheelchair user and are interested in sharing your expertise with designers, please email [email protected].

Whether or not this competition produces a design that revolutionises how we design homes or wheelchairs, it is embedding the concept of inclusive design into the minds and hands of those who will be shaping our physical world in the future, and the value of that can’t be overstated.

To see the design briefs for these challenges go to the following links:

Inclusive Living brief and toolkit

#HackOnWheels

The briefs for all the challenges

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