it all started with a simple question between Open Studio and Context … “how will we live in the next 50 years?”. We asked this because we saw that there was a gap between ground realities and research being done on built environment…
We realised how complex that question was when we started mapping all the aspects that were involved in answering that question…
We started reaching out to researchers, practitioners, academics… we mapped who was doing what research …
…and we did brainstorming sessions again and again to discuss what could be the themes, how to bring the research ideas together …
we started with a call for abstracts to reach the wider community of researchers on built environment on Bangladesh / from Bangladesh
we received 120+ abstracts .. and 90+ were invited for full-paper
the received essays went through an extensive peer-review process, then re-submitted, then sent to theme editors for the second round of review … (the hidden academic quality assurance process!) …
To communicate the vision of Next 50 years based on the ideas presented in the book, we launched an illustration competition: “Visualising Future Bangladesh” for each of the 9 themes. The results became the visual addition to the book...
and finally, now with the forewords from the theme editors, the book manuscript is almost ready… we are currently finalising the deal with the publisher.. and we are planning more social outreach events to take the ideas of the book to a larger audience…
