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13 November 2008
The Home Office has launched a competition to encourage the next generation of designers and architects to consider and include innovative counter-terrorism measures in their designs for buildings within crowded spaces.
Who can enter?
The ‘Public Spaces, Safer Places’ competition is open to students of architecture and design from across the country. They will be asked to think about security features and safety issues when designing a fictional public space.
The ‘Public Spaces, Safer Places’ competition is part of the RSA's Design Directions student award scheme for 2008/09, more information about how to enter (new window) is available on their website. The competition closes at the end of December 2008.
Help protect our country’s crowded places
Lord West, the Home Office Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Security and Counter-terrorism, said: 'This competition is a great opportunity for students of architecture and design to make a significant contribution to protecting our country’s crowded places from terrorist attacks.
'The designing-in of counter-terrorism protective security measures to new buildings at the earliest concept design stage will be crucial to the future of safer crowded places.'
This competition responds to one of the recommendations Lord West made in his review of how best to protect crowded places from terrorism - the need to do more to raise awareness of designing-in counter terrorism measures among professional bodies, such as architects and designers.
The competition has been developed in collaboration with the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and the police National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO).
