Pandemic Architecture, an International Ideas Competition curated by the Design Ambassador for ARCHISEARCH.gr,  invited the creative community to open up a dialogue and create a think tank, looking for ideas from the architectural and design community about the future of the living, the workspace, the public space and the tourism industry after the outbreak of Covid-19.

Rethinking Emergency Design _ Plug-in Pod: an emergency isolation DIY kit for communities was longlisted in top 100 out of 440 projects.

-text by the authors

“Architecture is not just one thing. It is not just an art. It has to deal with the real situation; it has to do something good for the society. Architecture can provide a better life for people.”

Xiaodu Lui

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has affected the world in unforeseen ways, with the consequences proving to be immense and far-reaching. In the case of Novel Corona, distancing is resisting. The community should possess a capability to resist when trouble hits, an antifragile approach that every country would take for reducing the impact, not as easy as it is to say. The pandemic hitting seven continents and almost all countries have directly or indirectly affected lives.

Distancing itself becoming a major complication, most of the nation had disaster management plans in case of disasters, to evacuate, but were not prepared to isolate. Even though managing the situation by setting up isolation facilities for people in public buildings and other places, the question is- for how long? Things would bounce back to normal, but corona may persist until a vaccine is invented. Thus, there would be a massive requirement of isolation/ quarantine facility. After a continuous rise in cases worldwide, it’s demanding an urgent solution.

Understanding the issues and importance of distancing in the current situation, we propose a universal prototype which is a modular unit that can be scalable, easy to assemble, transport, and reassemble concerning the needs.

It is mainly intended to serve the people who have interacted with COVID-19 positive patients by providing a means to isolate them. The Plug-in Pod kit is flexible enough to replicate in any context. Parameters can be prioritized and permutations of modules can be developed according to the context and requirements. Production scales depends on the requirements and can be planned across the regions.

All of the elements in the unit are precast and it can be assembled by 4 men in a single day.

It is easy to assemble with joinery connections and no fixed connections are needed. In this condition of continuous spread, these modular units can act as isolation/ quarantine facilities and can be repurposed in the future to any alternative use as per demands.

Facts & Credits
Participants  Aparna Lakshmy Krishnan, Aravind S, Aswin S Kumar, Radhika Suresh, Sibin Sabu
Country  India

The project was longlisted in top 100 out of 440 projects.

The impact of Pandemic Architecture competition on the international architectural community was astonishing, with the number of registrations to exceed 800, with the final proposals to exceed 400 and with participants from more than 60 different countries.
Results will be officially announced on the 20th of September.

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Check out the open call and the jury here!


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