The competition seeks innovative and feasible design solutions for a modern, multifunctional Digital Service Point that will seamlessly blend existing street furniture and physical infrastructure. We are looking for solutions that are sensitive and complementary to the City’s public spaces and include amenities and digital technologies that serve the public and police.

 

A creative and sustainable, public intervention is desired to animate and enhance the City of London public realm and improve quality of life for local residents and businesses. The proposals should take a holistic design approach, offering a flexible and adaptable design solution that could be applied to a series of sites across the City of London.

 

Up to 6 shortlisted teams will be awarded £1,500 to develop a design proposal that can stimulate debate, address the needs and desires of local stakeholders, and positively influence the future direction for the project. 

 

Following the competition process, the winning team will be revealed in late May 2021 after which the City of London Police will start the process of raising the funding for the delivery of the selected design scheme.

The City of London, also known as the Square Mile, is the historic heart of London and one of the world’s leading financial centres. It is home to approximately 8,000 residents and a working population of over 513,000 people. Each year the City welcomes over 10 million tourists, in addition to those visiting for business.

 

The City of London has an ever-increasing working population and a growing number of visitors. To ensure the Square Mile remains a great place to live, work, study and visit, the streets and spaces must respond to these changes in order to maintain the area’s attractiveness, safety and welcoming ambience.

 

To deliver significant improvements to the safety of Square Mile residents, workers and visitors, the City of London Corporation and City of London Police have jointly launched the Secure City Programme (SCP). Using technology in an innovative way, the programme has set out to achieve more effective management of the City streets. Increased situational awareness will facilitate significant improvements to incident identification, decision making and incident response capabilities.

 

SCP is an effort to make the City of London the safest city in the world through the use of cutting-edge technologies and enhanced collaboration between the City Corporation, the Police, and local partners, such as businesses, organizations and residents. Ensuring that the City is somewhere “to be safe and to feel safe,” now and in the future.

 

The City’s Accommodation Programme is seeking to rationalise its property portfolio resulting in the closure of police stations across the Square Mile. Digital Service Points will help address that reduction and advance the Secure City effort by providing physical locations to integrate new technologies and to allow for effective, seamless interactions between the Corporation, Police, residents, visitors and local businesses.

 

SCP is supporting the strategy to create the new Digital Service Points [DSPs] that will bring the traditional Police Boxes into the 21st Century. The issues identified are:

 

The aim of this project is to support the interaction between the public, police and Corporation while also offering a more engaging public realm experience.

 

The new Digital Service Point(s) should:

 

Submissions will be shortlisted by the expert jury panel. Up to 6 shortlisted practices will then be invited to participate in the Stage 2 of this competition and will be awarded an honorarium of £1,500 plus VAT each. The work required for the second phase of the project will be reflective of the honorarium sum and include the equivalent of two A2 boards explaining your proposal. This can come in the form your practice feels will most effectively communicate your design to the jury panel.

We are looking for proposals that are functional, respond to the brief aims, and are realistic and buildable. They must be vandal proof and offer a sustainable design solution. Each design proposal should fit within the cost parameters of £250,000 per Digital Service Point.

 

Design proposals should include:

 

It is recommended that design proposals may also include (but are also not limited to) some of the below public amenities:

 
For features listed above collaboration with other businesses could be considered. We recommend the following general design guidelines:

This competition has a two-stage submission. This first stage submission should include:

 

Submissions will be shortlisted by the judging panel. Up to 6 shortlisted practices will then be invited to develop a more detailed design proposal based on the information laid out in this open call and will be awarded an honorarium of £1500 plus VAT each.

 

Following the shortlisting process, a briefing session with City of London, City of London Police, Bloomberg Associates and New London Architecture will be organised for all the teams.

 

The work required for the second phase of the project will be reflective of the honorarium sum.

 

We will be expecting:

The competition is open to architects, designers and artists. We welcome collaborations however the project must be actively led by a named architect.

The deadline for first submission is midday 1st March 2021. Submissions received after this time will not be considered.

For competition enquires please contact: rosa.rogina@nla.london 

Please send expressions of interest in a PDF format via the below link

The PDF should be no more than 5MB and 10 A4 pages.

You will receive an email confirming receipt of your submission.

The competition organisers are not liable for lost, misdirected, or late entries. Decisions of the jury represent their professional judgments and all decisions are final. While it is the intent to construct the winning scheme, the organisers reserve the right to not proceed with construction for any reason. Material submitted by you shall be your sole responsibility, shall not infringe or violate the rights of any other party or violate any laws, contribute to or encourage infringing or otherwise unlawful conduct, or otherwise be obscene, objectionable, or in poor taste. By submitting such material, you are representing that you are the owner of such material and/or have all necessary rights, licenses, and authorization to distribute it.