Architecture firm Scott Brownrigg has developed a concept for a pod with a transparent divider to allow people to meet vulnerable relatives safely, plus today's other design-related coronavirus news.

Called the Social Contact Pod, the prefabricated structure would allow families with vulnerable relatives to meet without putting each other at risk of transmitting disease.

A perspex wall divides the room in two to create full visual contact. Metal ceiling panels with integrated speakers would transmit sound across the barrier for conversation.

"It is lightweight, rapidly constructed and is easily transported on the back of a standard truck or pulled on a trailer," said Scott Brownrigg.

"Importantly, it's been designed to be fully sustainable so that pods can be repurposed or recycled with relative ease when they are, hopefully, no longer needed."

Scott Brownrigg included a panel of more flexible plastic in the perspex screen to allow users to hold hands without skin contact.

Isolation is hard on friends and family who have to remain separate to cut the risk of transmitting the virus, which spreads from person to person via droplets from the nose and mouth.

Until a vaccine is created, people who are over the age of 70, or who have pre-existing health conditions, will need to reduce their contact with anyone outside their immediate household.

With society having to rapidly adjust to balance public health with the need for human connection, Scott Brownrigg developed the Social Contact Pod with engineers Ramboll and Hoare Lea to ask how architecture can help people temporarily adjust their behaviour.

The pod, which has ramps for accessibility, would include handle-less doors, hygienic floors and an air purging system to flush it between uses.

Here are five more coronavirus-related architecture and design news stories from today: