Archinect - News

MASS Design Group brings pandemic design expertise to American hospital wards

2020-04-30T16:17:00-04:00

In the mad rush to accommodate the surge of COVID-19 patients in New York City that started in March, the city's Mount Sinai hospital looked to MASS Design Group to help it understand how its built environment could be influencing contagion control, and to gather additional knowledge that could be shared with other hospitals facing a surge in COVID-19 patients .

MASS Design Group has extensive experience working within the pandemic setting, as the group's work in Haiti, East Africa, and other international locales battling infectious disease outbreaks demonstrates. In a recent article published by The Boston Globe, Michael Murphy, founding principal and executive director of MASS Design Group, outlines design approaches focused on the potential spaces have to transmit (or prevent transmission) of deadly particles via "air, surfaces, and water."

MASS Design Group partnered with Ariadne Labs, a healthcare innovation consultancy founded by Atul Gawande, to publish an online PDF title...

Largest Gothic cathedral in the world to become COVID-19 field hospital in New York

2020-04-10T16:05:00-04:00

The vast interior of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Manhattan stood empty on Monday, the thousands of chairs that normally sit beneath its soaring ceiling and stained-glass windows removed to make room for a more grim sight: a coronavirus field hospital.

Rt. Rev. Clifton Daniel III, dean of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in New York City tells The New York Times, “Traditionally, in earlier centuries, cathedrals were always used this way, like during the plague. So this is not outside the experience of being a cathedral, it is just new to us.”

AIA’s COVID-19 Task Force publishes design guide for retrofitting buildings for hospital use

2020-04-08T16:23:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has published a preliminary “Preparedness Assessment Tool” to help architects and healthcare directors appropriately select existing buildings for reuse as Alternative Care Sites (ACS).

The document brings together best practices for ACS design based on existing and recently implemented directives and was developed according to “joint professional input from trained and experienced health care architects, designers, engineers, scientists, life-safety consultants, healthcare professionals, and hospital facility operations,” according to the document.

The Tool stakes out key priorities for these temporary sites and offers design guidance for limiting the spread of viruses within the facility while establishing a baseline level of quality and functionality for the healthcare delivered in these spaces.

Previously on Archinect: “AIA publishes COVID-19 database to share best practices in hospital conversion design.” View of the temporary hospi...

2,500-bed hospital conversion at NYC’s Javits Center opens

2020-04-03T18:59:00-04:00

This week, New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announced that work on the plan to convert the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan into a 2,500-bed temporary hospital has been completed.

The temporary hospital facility is one of four sites currently under construction across the region, facilities that will make up the first phase of an effort launched by the Governor to increase the number of hospital beds across the downstate area. The conversions are being handled by a federal response team led by the Army Corps of Engineers. Additional project partners include: The state of New York, the city of New York, the New York National Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the General Services Administration, the Defense Department, and members of the United States armed forces, according to the the US Department of Defense website.

In the case of the Javits Center, the expansi...

AIA publishes COVID-19 database to share best practices in hospital conversion design

2020-04-03T17:57:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is currently assembling a database containing information on the health care facilities, both traditional and temporary, and the design professionals around the world mobilizing in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last week, AIA announced the creation of an internal COVID-19 task force that seeks to provide expert advice on how existing buildings can be rapidly converted for temporary hospital use.

Previously on Archinect: “AIA launches COVID-19 task force to advise building adaptation for hospital use initiatives.”View of the repurposed Oakland Municipal Auditorium during the 1918 flu epidemic. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / Edward A. "Doc" Rogers.

As part of that group’s work, AIA has published the COVID-19 ArchMap, an online library created in partnership with the Kansas University Institute of Health + Wellness Design. The website collects information on these medical facilities in order to create a searchable resource for med...

AIA launches COVID-19 task force to advise building adaptation for hospital use initiatives

2020-03-26T15:13:00-04:00

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has announced the creation of a special task force that aims to educate public officials, healthcare facilities, and other architects on how to adapt existing buildings for temporary hospital use.

According to a statement published by the group this morning, the task force will encourage "federal, state and local government to adapt appropriate existing buildings to meet the growing healthcare and quarantine needs resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic," a phenomenon that has already begun to take shape in some of the cities hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, where the need for hospital beds is quickly outstripping the available supply.

Previously on Archinect: "US Army Corps of Engineers has a plan to convert hotels into “ICU-like” facilities." The Army Corps of Engineers has developed a standard plan for converting hotels into makeshift hospital wards. Shown: The Army Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C. Image courtesy of Wikimedi...

US Army Corps of Engineers has a plan to convert hotels into “ICU-like” facilities

2020-03-23T21:47:00-04:00

In the mad dash to make up for a decades-long decline in overall medical capacity in the United States that has come into full relief during the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States Army Corps of Engineers has had to step in and help create makeshift hospitals across the country so that people suffering from the disease can receive the treatment they need.

As previously reported, states and local municipalities across the country are working to retrofit existing buildings, including bankrupt hospitals, empty convention centers, and increasingly, hotels, to meet the growing need for Intensive Care facilities.

Previously on Archinect: “NYC considers converting Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to temporary medical facility.” Photo by Flickr user ajay_suresh, licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0

Those municipalities are largely putting into effect a plan developed by the Army Corps that was communicated in a press briefing given on Friday, March 20th via the US Army’s Twitter acc...

States convert underutilized buildings and bankrupt hospitals into tactical medical facilities

2020-03-23T17:01:00-04:00

Across the country, as the spread of the coronavirus pandemic continues to grow, cities and states are quickly putting vacant or underutilized buildings to use as makeshift medical facilities.

Last week, Archinect reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was working to converting the Javtis Center in Manhattan, as well as three other facilities, into temporary hospital wards to deal with the onslaught of patients suffering from the COVID-19 disease.

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has moved to take over two existing hospital facilities that had previously shuttered—St. Vincent Medical Center in Los Angeles and Seton Medical Center in Daly City—to help with that’s state’s rapid medical facility mobilization, as well. SFGate reports that the Seton facility could bring 357 hospital beds online, while The Los Angeles Times writes that the St. Vincent facility could render 177 hospital beds.

Meanwhile, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan recently moved to take over the Baltimore C...

NYC considers converting Jacob K. Javits Convention Center to temporary medical facility

2020-03-21T13:39:00-04:00

[Gov. Andrew Cuomo] has requested four field hospitals of 250 beds each from the federal government, for a total of 1,000 beds. He is looking at Javits for all of those. He's also asked for four Army Corps of Engineers temporary hospitals. For those, he's looking at the Javits Center; SUNY Stony Brook; SUNY Old Westbury; and the Westchester County Center, another events venue.