As the healthcare infrastructure is becoming overwhelmed and hospitals around the world are reaching their capacities, new alternative possibilities are emerging. In response to bed shortage and facility saturation, architects around the world are taking action, in the on-going fight against the coronavirus. Focusing their knowhow to find fast and efficient design solutions that can be implemented anywhere, they are proposing flexible, fast assembled, mobile, and simple structures. With a very tight timetable, some projects are already implemented and in service, while others remain on a conceptual level, waiting to be adopted. Although in general, the planning guidelines for new hospitals dictates that 15 to 20 % of spaces should be dedicated to transmittable diseases, most of the facilities around the world couldn’t have anticipated a pandemic of this scale. As a result, Carlo Ratti has converted shipping containers into intensive-care pods, consisting of rapidly mounted, easily movable and safe units. CURA, a safe isolation ward, containing all the medical equipment needed has its first prototype ready. In the Philippines, WTA put in place 60 emergency quarantine facilities, repurposing one of their pavilions into a short-term relief space. The temporary structures made from wood and plastic can be replicated anywhere in order to increase the capacity of hospitals. Other more conceptual approaches include the mobile units designed by the startup JUPE HEALTH, rapidly deployed rest and recovery units, as well as mobile ICUs. At "1/30th the cost of a hospital room", they are designed and built for doctors by doctors and can be shipped anywhere.
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