Case Description
During the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Waugh Thistleton Architects envisioned mobile vaccination centres that would travel across the UK and rapidly immunize the entire population while relieving pressure from NHS centres and allowing schools and sports venues to fulfil their original functions. The mobile vaccination centres would travel across the entire country and connect even the most remote villages to essential medical infrastructure in times of pandemics. “The vaccination units can be delivered into the heart of villages and remote communities or in clusters spread through towns and cities, vaccinating the local population before moving on.” said Andrew Waugh of Waugh Thistleton Architects.
At that time, a vaccine still hadn’t been developed. The architects wished to contribute with a scalable, temporary and actionable solution, ready to be deployed as soon as a vaccine is approved. They designed the mobile vaccination centres from standard 12.2 metre-long shipping containers, which would travel on trucks. The design divides the inside space into three segments: patient first register, secondly receive the vaccine, and finally, rest before leaving the container on the other end. In this linear process, the architects aimed to minimize the risk of spreading the virus.
Relation to Resilience
Its design for mobility makes the vaccination centers a flexible solution to the challenge of vaccinating people in various remote areas. By speeding up the process of vaccination, the mobile vaccination centers can support local or national governments to offer protection to their citizens more effectively.