Embedding Transience in Permanence: The School Pandemically Reconsidered

Abstract

The greatest catastrophic threat cities face today is not nuclear weapons but viruses. The intention of the project is to rethink the way cities can be prepared for future pandemic crisis in terms of architecture.

Fusing the similar spatial organizations of a school and a pandemic hospital, the project proposes a new type that functions as both, asynchronously. The new type is capable of adapting to the needs of a health crisis by temporarily shutting down the education program and facilitating remote learning to make space for a pandemic hospital. The thesis combines the permanent but flexible idea of type with the transient idea of rapid expansion/contraction to adapt to the sudden but temporary need for an enormously increased amount of hospital space in the city. Through systems of circulation and modularity, the built form is able to convert, expand, and contract according to the requirements of its alternating programs. New spatial opportunities for both the school and the hospital are also created by the integrated systems that eases of the transition.

The sites of the hypothesis are located in Beijing, the densely populated political center of China. By embedding the emergency healthcare infrastructure within the city rather than relegating it to peripheral locations, the proposal aims to have a significant impact on the city, both socially and morphologically.