This year, people all over the world are finding the restrictions of lockdown have stumped and stifled their creativity. COVID-19 narrowed our activity, interactions and experiences, making our lives smaller and more mundane. How can people get their creative mojo back for 2021?

Modular design. It’s not new, but modular construction has been a long time coming. With six Lego bricks, 915 million combinations are possible. Like Lego, prefab has been around for a long time. Could socially distancing, labour shortages and population growth be the drivers for scale and repeatability that modular design needs to finally take off as a mainstream solution?

In an unconventional way of collaborating, Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins avoided each other for the entire The Silence of the Lambs shoot to stay in character. After filming wrapped in 1991, they moved on and went their separate ways. That’s how Hollywood and most freelancing jobs work: project-based, flexible, short-term, unpredictable. Can we combine engineering, freelancing and the gig economy? Would enabling engineers to work on passion projects keep them engaged?

The idea of ‘what makes a great leader’ is not new, with billions of dollars and countless hours spent on business coaching. Yet, it seems our current breed of leaders are failing to meet our expectations. Aurecon’s Chief Experience Officer, Maureen Thurston-Chartraw, shares a fascinating story about labradoodles and what we can learn about the qualities of leadership we must consider in these troubling times.

Home advantage is commonly used in the circles of sports design. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, stadiums are now sitting empty, longing for the thrilling energy of screaming fans. The last few months have made many of us realise how much we miss and value sport. And in turn, sport is going to realise how much it values and misses its spectators. Will 2021 be the loneliest year for our sporting superstars? How can operators use design and technology to bring sports spectators back to join the game?

By pure chance, you mentioned a problem you were struggling with to a colleague at the office water cooler. You left feeling inspired. That serendipitous encounter gave your ideas that bit of ‘magic’ you needed to move them forward. What will happen to such unexpected encounters when everyone is under some form of house arrest? What will this mean for the evolution of the workspace post COVID-19?

Human behaviour, following government mandated change, has tamed one of the most expensive habits on the planet: the peak-hour commute. In a post-COVID world, what if we challenge the idea that we all must travel to a workplace every day? Could we take this opportunity to unlock the performance of our transport networks, provide alternative transport choices and improve quality of life?

Today’s digital technologies are requiring us to learn new knowledge and perspectives – and fast. As new technologies emerge every week, our existing technologies continue to evolve and become more powerful. Ironically, if we want to grow and adapt to these changes, we need to learn how to unlearn. How can organisations navigate this shift and ensure their competitive edge stays sharp?

How different would the world be if nothing was immortalised with the written word? Would we have been able to achieve the technological progress we have, if we couldn’t learn from the brilliant thinkers that went before us? In the man-made world around us, every engineering feat and design marvel, first originated in the imagination of someone. It is a collection of manifested ideas; a myriad coming from the minds and pens of science fiction writers.

It is somewhere out there. Out of sight, out of smell, and so far out of mind that we can measure it in light years. Regardless, it demands its pound of flesh and what it spares us in head space, it exacts from just about everything else we hold dear. The giant, Dali-esque elephant desperately trying to blend into the corner of our neat little room is the friendly neighbourhood landfill. And it’s not only the landfill – thrown into the deal are air pollution, water poisoning and spontaneous combustion. You never marry a single person, you marry the family. And this crowd is a hot mess.

We are getting increasingly concerned over climate change, or so the most recent research suggests. Needless to say, we are aligning our personal convictions and civic action accordingly…right? Not necessarily. In recent elections across the world, significant numbers cast their vote on policies that downplay or outright ignore the need to address climate change. What is going on here?