In response to the urgent need for more widespread and rapid COVID-19 testing, Perkins and Will's New York studio — along with its Denmark studio Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects, and in partnership with multi-disciplinary design group Arup— has designed a plan to retrofit out-of-use school buses into mobile testing labs.

As insufficient testing remains a high concern for health professionals, lower-income, under-served, and homeless populations around the world have been significantly impacted by the pandemic and face disproportionate barriers to treatment and testing. The project team for this new initiative believes mobile testing labs will help tackle the existing inequities for these communities. 

"While no one is immune to the COVID-19 virus, testing and treatment is not a level playing field. It is the under-served communities, including lower-income and homeless populations, that need our urgent help at this time," said Mariana Giraldo, architect and strategic planning specialist at Perkins and Will’s New York studio. "We wanted to harness the expertise of our interdisciplinary team to help those in need during the crisis. We believe the mobile testing lab is a scalable and accessible solution to close the gap on testing in our home, New York City, and across the world." 

The team identified seven key parameters to guide their design process: equitability, mobility, accessibility, speed, flexibility, ease of implementation, and scalability. Retrofitting under-utilized school buses into the testing labs adhered to the team's established criteria.

"As we've been closely watching the evolving circumstances surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, we've had the opportunity to look at the international response and learn from other countries," said Giraldo, who conceived of the idea with Enlai Hooi, an industrial designer with Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.

Patients would arrive to the buses where they would be greeted by technicians behind plexiglass. After a brief check-in process, the technician would use a swab to take a sample from the patient for testing. Once results are received from the tests, results would be recorded and uploaded to the federal government's database and the patient would be notified.