ReROW Ideathon 2025
On the 22nd of March, 2025, over 50 students from various faculties across Architecture and design, economics, forestry, computer science, and more attended a full-day Ideathon at the UBC Nest on campus, spending hours collaborating, brainsorming, and presenting their idea of a reimagined bus loop.
The 2025 ReROW IDEAthon Competition invited undergraduate students to reimagine University Boulevard from East Mall to Wesbrook and propose improvements to the associated systems within this corridor.
What is ReROW?
The urban street, aka, the right-of-way (ROW) is the public space from one property line to another. The ROW often includes mobility of people of goods, spaces for utilities, ecosystems services and social, economic, and civic users. ReROW recognizes that there is a critical need to reconsider the design, use, and management of the public rights-of-way (ROW) (e.g., streets, laneways, sidewalks) toward more sustainable, equitable, and healthy forms.
The Site
As a central location at UBC, University Boulevard sees a lot of changes and construction throughout the year with various her new projects ranging from the new Biomedical Engineering building, and the Gateway nearby, forming a site which sees a lot of operational and ROW changes: redirecting pedestrians, changing parking patterns, construction and maintains operations throughout the year.
The Ideathon Competition
From 9am to 5pm, the Ideathon had a packed schedule from start to finish.
Provided the design brief 2 days ahead of the Ideathon competition, teams of 4 representing at least 2 faculties presented their ideas in 3-minute elevator pitches to a jury comprised of diverse UBC faculty from Rethinking the Right-of-Way cluster, including Kelly Clifton, Alex Bigazzi, Theordore Lim, and Cynthia Girling. With projects judged based on Concept, Communication Design, and Sustainable Design.
The top 3 projects were announced same-day after a brief deliberation period, with additional honorable mentions picked by NOMAS and ReROW.
Interested in taking part in the Ideathon? Stay updated with NOMAS about our 2026 Ideathon this winter semester! Details are coming soon...
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