Designs sought for Radio 4 Listening Project Pod

Designers are being sought to create a new movable pod for The Listening Project, a mobile space in which people around the UK will volunteer to record intimate conversations.

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The Listening Project was initiated by BBC Radio 4 last year in in partnership with BBC Local Radio and the Nations, and invited people to go to a studio and record a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they’ve never discussed intimately before.

Designers, product designers, engineers and architects are now being invited to submit designs for a new pod that would be able to tour the UK, as part of a Royal Institute of British Architects competition.

Among the stipulations on the design brief are that the pod must be ‘a unique and welcoming space’ that is robust enough to be easily moved around the UK. It must be suitable to be sited in both outdoor spaces and interior venues, such as shopping malls or festival tents.

The pod will be dressed with the BBC Radio 4 branding, and the brief states that organisers are ‘interested in 
an option for flexible branding that [allows] local radio station logos to be featured as additional secondary logos as and when required.’

The BBC has a budget of around £40,000 (+VAT) to implement the winning pod design to include all design fees, travel/expenses, construction, insurance/ professional advice and every other aspect of realisation.

People are encouraged to have a chat about something they've never discussed before.
People are encouraged to have a chat about something they’ve never discussed before.

The conversations from the initial pod’s tenure are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices that aims to create ‘a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium’, according to organisers.

The closing date for Stage 1 submissions is 23 April 2013. 

For more information and to download the full brief see the RIBA competition page here

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