Social Distancing Housing Block is part of a Competition series, developed to imagine new dwelling models through a variety of creative architectural designs and feasible innovation. Considering the limits of the current housing market, what could be the domestic architecture of the future?According to the United Nations, the world population is expected to grow by almost 25% in the coming thirty years. Such growth will most likely occur in urban areas, where the housing shortage is already becoming an urgent issue. Additionally, a large part of existing and future buildings will be destined for residential use, leaving a huge impact on the way people live, experience, and affect cities. In this context housing models have been frozen into standardized solutions that leave little or no room for innovation. Such solutions are often perpetrated as a convention, missing a wide range of unexplored opportunities.

The COVID-19 outbreak showed how our way of living can quickly change, while dwellings suddenly became the main stage for this transformation. Imagining a society where social distancing is the new normality, how should housing models change? How can we introduce a valuable change in the established model, to disrupt the real estate market and benefit dwellers, the environment, and the city?Social Distancing Housing Block aims to answer these questions.