Drive-through clinics in hospital car parks could be used for "accelerated vaccine roll-out" says NBBJ

Hospital patients could be treated in prefabricated drive-through clinics without leaving their cars, according to a concept by architect NBBJ.

The clinics could also be used to administer coronavirus vaccinations, according to the architects.

The prefabricated units "could be especially effective for accelerated vaccine roll-out, as it enables simultaneous distribution to every passenger in the car," said NBBJ partner Ryan Hullinger.

NBBJ has designed a concept for drive-through clinics at hospitals

The proposal, drawn up in response to the coronavirus pandemic, would see patients drive into special bays outside hospitals or in hospital parking garages.

There, they would interface with healthcare staff through an open car window or door.

"Covid has pushed us to think about breaking out of the boundaries of a traditional healthcare space and actually providing primary care in a totally unorthodox space like a car," said Hullinger.

The concept would allow people to receive treatment without leaving their cars

The In Car Care concept involves placing rows of drive-in service bays between columns in existing parking facilities.

Patients with non-urgent conditions could be treated by medical staff in the bays without leaving their vehicles.

Hullinger explained the concept during a live Dezeen talk about wellbeing and healthcare, presented by bathroom and kitchen products brand Kohler.

Patients would be treated in bays similar to pits used in motor racing

NBBJ developed the concept earlier this year after noticing that the Covid-19 pandemic was changing the way patients visited hospitals, often waiting outside in their cars rather than entering the building and using waiting rooms.

"It was driven by demand for convenience and demand for safety," said Hullinger, who is based at international architecture firm NBBJ's office in Columbus, Ohio.

"Both of these things have been around for a long time. Healthcare has been happening in the space of a car for quite a while now in pharmacy drive-throughs but [the need for] safety has acutely curved up in the last nine months."

"There's a sweet spot here," he added. "In-car care needs to be explored."

The prefabricated units could be erected between columns in existing parking garages

Unlike a traditional drive-through facility such as a restaurant or pharmacy, where cars queue up and orders are taken through a window, the In Car Care concept would be akin to a motor-racing pitstop, with services brought to the car once it is stationary.

"The beauty of the service bay [approach] is that it's nonlinear," said Hullinger. "So instead of the drive-through, where you have serial processing, you get parallel processing."

"And you get better human interface because you're not reaching through an architectural window to interact with the patient. You're standing right next to the patient through a roll-down window or an open door."

Each bay measures 600 square feet (56 square metres)

The prefabricated bays would feature sliding screens for privacy and large monitors on wheels so that patients can see test results and health data.

Set at an angle to the service road to allow easier access, the diamond-shaped bays fit within the 60-foot (18-metre) grid of a standard parking lot. Each is 600 square feet (56 square metres) in volume.

However, the bays would be designed to reassure patients that they are entering a safe and friendly environment.

"The look and feel of that space is also extremely important to us," Hullinger explained. "We want to make sure that people who are pulling into this space don't have any confusion with pulling into anything that feels automotive or unclean."

The clinics would be prefabricated off site and delivered on trucks

The units would have psychological benefits too since people feel safe in their cars, whereas entering a hospital can make people feel anxious.

The Covid-19 pandemic has led to a huge increase in the use of telehealth services, potentially leading to a long-term decline in visits to hospitals.

This in turn could free up space in hospital parking garages, making NBBJ's drive-in bays a viable alternative for people who don't have access to telehealth services or who prefer a physical meeting with caregivers.

Drive-in healthcare facilities could be set up anywhere they are needed, Hullinger said.

"We're beginning to think about this idea of potentially putting them in underutilised malls in cities where you have arterial freeway access," he said.

Broadcast live last week, Dezeen's Wellbeing and Healthcare talk also featured interior designer Tony Chi and Kohler's vice president of industrial design Lun Cheak Tan.

Another proposal for rapid coronavirus vaccinations was unveiled by UK architect Waugh Thistleton earlier this year.

Their concept involves building thousands of mobile vaccination clinics in shipping containers, which they claim could be used to vaccinate the entire UK population in 16 weeks.

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Freadman White completes Napier Street apartments in Melbourne

Architecture practice Freadman White has created an apartment block in Melbourne's Fitzroy neighbourhood, finishing its interiors with gleaming brass accents.

The Napier Street apartments were designed by Freadman White for property developers Milieu. It is situated directly beside Whitlam Place, another residential block designed by the practice.

The Napier Street apartment block has a simple off-white facade

Whilst Whitlam Place has a green-hued exterior clad with corrugated panels of oxidised copper, Napier Street features a plain off-white facade punctuated by wide windows.

Freadman White says the building's pared-back aesthetic draws inspiration from Heide II – a modernist Melbourne home designed in 1963 by Australian architects David McGlashan and Neil Everist, which has masonry walls and expansive panels of glazing.

Rooms feature concrete ceilings and oak floors

An equally refined material palette has been applied throughout the interiors of Napier Street's 14 apartment units. Each home boasts oak flooring and exposed concrete ceilings, which rise up to 2.9 metres in height.

Kitchens have been finished with wooden cabinetry, white-tile splashbacks and countertops crafted from pale Elba stone.

Brass shelving and door handles have been incorporated throughout

There are some decadent touches in the apartments – for example, some of the bedrooms are closed off by glossy, full-height black doors.

Golden-hued brass has also been used to create door handles, shelves and vanity units inside the bathrooms, which are otherwise lined with grey terrazzo tiles.

Glossy black doors conceal the apartments' bedrooms

Elements in the apartment block's communal areas such as the front gate and mailboxes are also made out of brass.

"Napier Street is a symphony of robust materiality displaying organic, muted beauty carried from the exterior through to the interior experience," concluded the practice, which is led by Ilana Freadman and Michael White.

More brass detailing appears in the terrazzo-lined bathrooms

Freadman White's Napier Street and Whitlam Place projects both made it to the longlist of this year's Dezeen Awards. The practice has previously renovated a 1930s home in Melbourne's Elsternwick neighbourhood to include an angular grey-brick extension.

Photography is by Gavin Green.

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Project credits:

Client: Milieu Property
Builder: Atelier Projects
Styling: Hub Furniture

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Live panel discussion on the challenges of making sustainability mainstream by Dezeen and Material Lab

A panel of experts including sustainability writer Katie Treggiden will share their personal journey towards creating a less wasteful future, in this live talk hosted by Dezeen for design resource studio Material Lab. Watch here from 2:00pm London time.

The talk, which is called Valued or Wasted: Four Perspectives on Making a Sustainable Impact, will be moderated by Dezeen's founder and editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs and also feature The Good Plastics Company founder William Chizhovsky.

Treggiden and Chizhovsky will be joined by Nature Squared founder Lay Koon Tan and Jason Bridges, who is the head of procurement and production support at heritage British tile manufacturer Johnson Tiles.

The four panellists will discuss the challenges they face in their attempts to make the design industry more sustainable, and how their journeys cross over and diverge.

The live conversation will also cover the role of collaboration in the design industry, how to turn discourse into action, and the ways in which sustainability could work as a business strategy.

"The obstacles for a very traditional, 120-year manufacturer like Johnson Tiles are very different to those of an entrepreneurial business like The Good Plastic Company," said Bridges.

"As the UK's only surviving large scale tile manufacturer, we've had to navigate our industrial set-up to move forward sustainably; both to address the environmental crisis and to stay in business," he added.

Treggiden is a journalist and author who champions the circular approach in design. She is also the host and producer of the podcast called Circular with Katie Treggiden.

Earlier this year, she published her fifth book Wasted: When Trash Becomes Treasure, which explores the question: can craft save the world?

"Wasted: When Trash Become Treasure is about the role that craft can play in sustainability and the circular economy while acknowledging that design is also part of the problem," said Treggiden.

The Good Plastic Company founder and CEO William Chizhovsky

Chizhovsky is the founder and CEO of The Good Plastic Company, an organisation with a circular business model that manufactures environmentally friendly recycled-plastic sheets.

The company's main mission is to contribute a solution to the 400 million tonnes of plastic waste that are generated by the global population on an annual basis.

"We've worked hard to ensure our mission and operations are aligned," said Chizhovsky.

"We've removed industrial plastic waste while being wholly reliant on renewable energy and creating zero-waste processes."

Lay Koon Tan, founder of Nature Squared

Tan, one of the makers featured in Treggiden's recent book, is co-founder of ethical design brand Nature Squared, together with Paul Hoeve.

Nature Squared aims to reimagine waste materials as luxury products, and is best known for creating a dashboard made from feathers for British car brand Rolls Royce.

"Shifting people's perception of 'waste' is definitely a key challenge," said Tan.

"People think that to make luxurious products, you have to use precious virgin materials. It's simply not true."

Jason Bridges, head of procurement and production support at Johnson Tiles

Bridges has a background in engineering and is the head of procurement and production support at Johnson Tiles, where he has overseen the eradication of all single-use plastics from its packaging.

His work also focuses on the implementation of wider initiatives at Johnson Tiles, including energy efficiency, waste reduction and water management.

This talk was produced by Dezeen for Material Lab, a London-based design resource studio and material library that was established in 2006 by Johnson Tiles.

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House by Urban Splash create a manifesto for the future of housebuilding

Dezeen promotion: new neighbourhoods should prioritise nature and support local enterprises according to a manifesto written by modern modular housebuilder, House by Urban Splash.

The manifesto called Live Well by Design is a blueprint for the future of housing. It sets out ten core tenets of urban design that are vital for the creation of sustainable communities and future neighbourhoods and forms their commitment to design, wellbeing, choice and sustainability.

The document includes pledges to build houses that are tailored to individual needs and to create green neighbourhoods that encourage healthy routines and activities such as walking and cycling that make it easier to live a low carbon lifestyle.

House by Urban Splash has created a manifesto called Live Well by Design

Established in 2019, House by Urban Splash is part of the Urban Splash family of property companies. It builds architect-designed factory-created, modular houses using low carbon and sustainable materials.

"This manifesto is our public commitment as a company to everything we believe in as a values led organisation," Orla McGrath, the brand's marketing director, told Dezeen.

"We believe homes should be the happiest place in the world, and to create that we must think beyond four walls, to the wider neighbourhood, and the idea of community and belonging," she continued.

"I knew we needed to articulate this as its important for House, as a fast-growing company, to set out very clearly what we stand for. That's how we will become truly synonymous with our values and engrain them into everything we do."

Housing in Port Loop follows the ideals in the manifesto

Before the official launch of House last year, Urban Splash had been developing modular houses since 2012 when the company teamed with Liverpool-based architects ShedKM to create its first prototype.

The two-storey, factory-created homes were installed at Urban Splash's neighbourhood in New Islington, Manchester.

The company launched the product to the market in 2016, offering buyers a completely customisable home installed by the canal within minutes of Manchester city centre.

House by Urban Splash is developing modular homes

Now with the backing of Homes England, the government's housing accelerator, and Japanese company Sekisui House – the world's largest homebuilder, House by Urban Splash has ambitions to become one of the UK's top ten housebuilders within the next ten years.

It hopes to do this by changing the way that new homes and communities are conceived, created and delivered in the UK.

One of the key aspects the team wanted to address was the lack of choice available in the UK's new housing market, and this is outlined in Live Well by Design.

"In a lot of new developments you can choose from a set of basic house types with set layouts," explained McGrath.

"But at House you can tell us exactly how you want to lay it out and we build it for you. You choose how much space you need, how many rooms, how big and which way round. Our team are able to deliver homes for all different types of lifestyles."

Sustainable homes have been built in cities across the UK

A lack of emphasis on neighbourhood design and the community was another issue that the team identified within new housing developments in the UK.

The manifesto states the importance of amenities such as parks, schools, health centres, independent shops and cafes, and talks about how they are essential to building a sense of community.

"Through our charitable trust we can support community projects and local enterprise so that things that make a difference in the life of a neighbourhood are rooted in the neighbourhood and delivered by local people for local people," it reads.

Port Loop in Birmingham contains numerous open green spaces

The company is already building homes at Port Loop in Birmingham, New Islington in Manchester and Northstowe in Cambridgeshire, with future neighbourhoods planned for the Wirrall, Milton Keynes, and Cambridge.

McGrath said that Port Loop, a 43-acre waterside neighbourhood in Birmingham with over 1,000 homes, and New Islington, a modern village in Manchester city centre, embody everything in the Live Well by Design manifesto.

These developments have ample open green space and connections to water. Residents are able to walk or cycle to work through these spaces and small local businesses are integrated into the neighbourhood plan.

At New Islington in Manchester 31 per cent of the homes are affordable while at Inholm at the new town of Northstowe in Cambridgeshire, 60 per cent of the homes in the entire neighbourhood are affordable.

In total, the Port Loop development contains over 1,000 homes

Going forward McGrath expects that the manifesto will evolve.

"For now we're using it as a blueprint to help us bid for new sites and to tell people what our intention is," she explained. "We can use it as a design code when we start working with an architect to masterplan a new site."

"We will use it as an evaluation tool to ensure that we have delivered on what we promised and that our neighbourhoods live up to our high standards. Crucially, it will also show potential customers how we've set ourselves apart from other volume housebuilders."

Read more about Live Well by Design on House by Urban Splash's website.

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Gus Wüstemann Architects tops barn-like home with overhanging roof

A large overhanging roof stands above this house that Gus Wüstemann Architects designed in the village of Buchberg, Switzerland.

Wüstemann adapted the form and materiality of the local gabled farm buildings that surround the Swiss village, near Zurich, to create a four-bedroom home that has a concrete frame and a wooden roof.

"We transformed the traditional wooden structure of a barn into a skeleton of concrete with a wooden roof, giving wider dimensions with less structural height," explained Gus Wüstemann, founder of Gus Wüstemann Architects.

An open-plan kitchen is located on the ground floor

A spacious, open-plan kitchen and dining room, which is sheltered under the large gabled roof, occupies almost the entirety of the ground floor.

A series of retractable glass panels can be moved to open up the space to create what the architect describes as a pavilion-like feel.

It can be opened up onto a terrace

"The concept was to have a gable roof covering an open ground floor of which half of it is outside space, like a barn, so in the summer the living area doubles," Wüstemann told Dezeen.

"When all the wooden sliding windows are open, it feels as there is only a roof, like a pavilion."

The studio described the space as pavilion-like

Separated from the open-plan kitchen by a staircase is a smaller living room that has a built-in concrete fireplace and window seat.

These stairs lead down to the basement, which contains a garage and study, and up to the four bedrooms that are contained within the roof space.

The living room has a concrete fire place

Throughout the project, Gus Wüstemann Architects limited the finishes to a combination of raw concrete and timber.

According to the studio, these materials help to give the building a more barn-like aesthetic and reduce the feeling of domesticity.

The upper floor is finished with wood

"The rawness and pragmatism of just having the two materials wood and concrete refers to a simple, almost industrial aesthetic of a barn. It's a reference to craftsmanship, how is it made," explained Wüsteman.

"The absence of residential connotations leaves more freedom for experiencing space."

Bedrooms are located in the roof

Although the majority of the ground floor is concrete, Wüsteman doesn't believe that this gives the house a cold feeling.

"I never felt a combination of concrete and wood could be cold," he said. "Obviously people react differently and sometimes we have prejudices because of things we were told."

"The photos were taken on a foggy day in the fall – maybe the picture of the house taken from the street could give that impression, concrete and fog – melancholic," he continued.

The house is located in the village of Buchberg

Wüstemann founded his Zurich-based studio in 1997 and has completed numerous projects in the city. These include an affordable apartment block almost entirely from concrete, dividing a 19th-century building into nine flats and using raw concrete to create a home and poolhouse overlooking Lake Zurich.

Photography is by Bruno Helbling.

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Project credits:

Architect: Gus Wüstemann Architects
Team: Bianca Kilian, Daniel Pelach, Panagiota Sarantinoudi
Civil engineer: Born Partner
HLSK planner: Frei + Partner
Building physicists: Gartenmann Engineering AG

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