Author Archives: Ine Ringlund

 After a week of being at uni from 9 to five every day, going home to do more uni work,several cups of hot chocolate every day, 1 cup of coffee (even though i dont like coffee), few hours of sleep, no social life and glue on everything I own we are finally on the last day.

 It might seem like a struggle but this week have been a good experience for me, both when it comes to the social and academical aspect of things. I have been able to talk to and gotten to know people in my class that i haven’t talked to before. Since i’m new in the class this was a great way for me to get to know people. Being tierd, frustrated and working together is actually a great way to bond friendships. I have also learned a lot this week, when it comes to team work, how to build a health clinic, and how to make a model. And I this is an experience I definitely will take with me!

The Curie group have worked very well together, we have had good communication and great team work. We had a lot of good ideas that ended up with a structure that everyone liked.

All in all this week have been better then i imagined it to be!

Thank you guys for a great week!

 After an early morning with everyone running around half asleep trying to finish the last pieces of the posters, models and printing out, it was finally time to have the presentation!

All the groups presented their work, until last it was our group the present our work. We had divided the presentation into different topics that different people in out group would talk about. I talked about the precedence studies, about ebola and the development of the layout.

There were several people there to evaluate the presentation and the work we had done. Emmanuel our client was there as well to evaluate and see what we had been working on, ha was especially focusing on the security aspect of the design, when it comes to not spreading the disease.

The day started by making some last few alterations on the model. Adding sand, trees and people to make the model look more real. We were all very pleased with how the model ended up looking like, and we were all proud of the work we have done over the past week. 

By placing the tent cover on only half of the structure we were able to show of the layout we had chosen for our health clinic. And also show the walls that we had chosen as the internal wall structures.

The internal walls that will divide the different rooms inside the tent will be collapsible walls. Which are walls made with a diamond structure and can be stretched out to the desired length.

Linden and myself found a type of these walls in Cockroft, a wall that can be stretched out to cover the whole entrance or be pulled back to allow people to walk to the staircase.

The students from Hazelwick school made a prototype of the wall in a 1:20 scale to show how the wall would work. On the final model there will be 1:50 walls, but these walls will be firm, only to show how the walls will look like.

– Ine Ringlund

Next step in making the final model was to work out the grid that the poles needed to be placed in. Both to make sure that the tent is structural stable, but also to prevent that the poles are places in a room in a way that will prevent movement though the structure.

The wooden boxes seen in the picture, is the curie boxes and the container.

Linden then covered half of the tent structure with fabric. We left half of the structure open so that you can see the room layout and the internal walls

– Ine Ringlund

The morning started with mass production of different components needed for the final model. Making the poles and the fences were a time consuming process, but is needed to make the final structure.

For the tent we used the method we had tried out on Wednesday, which was wooden pieces with pins on top. And by wrapping thread around the pins and stretching the thread from pole to pole, it created enough tension for the structure to stand up. 

For the walls we made firm structures, that is easy to make, but will not function as it will on a bigger scale. So the walls are just to show how it will look like. (We have a bigger model that is on a 1:20 scale which works as the wall would work in real life.)

After numb and sore fingers from cutting with a scalpel and glue over most of our clothes we constructed most of the fences needed in the model.

– Ine Ringlund

The layout of the health clinic have been one of the main aspect that we have worked on this week. How to get all the different components and areas to the right place, by placing them right when it comes to security and safety for both patients and staff. After many sketches, scaled drawings and different types of layouts we finally were able to find a layout that will function well. Both with our design and for the purpose of being a health clinic. 

One of the steps with making the layout was to separate the staff and the patients in the safest way possible. By creating risk zones and non risk zones.  Between these zones, a person have to go trough a decontamination area, to make sure that the no risk zone, keeps being virus free. This will both happen to the staff when leaving a risk zone, but also if a patient lives through the virus and are able to go to convalescence. Convalescence is viewed as a no risk zone and the patients need to be decontaminated before entering this area. 

As well as a decontamination area between no risk and risk area, there needs to be a foot bath in the layout. A foot bath is a place where the feet and hands are washed to prevent spreading the virus. since Ebola is spread through body fluids this is one of the most efficient and simplest ways to prevent spreading the virus.  We wanted to place the foot bath in a way that a person would have to go through a the foot bath no matter where the person is going inside the risk zone. And also, since a foot bath is a very expensive component to have in a health clinic, we wanted to have as few numbers of them as possible. After many different layout, we finally found a layout that makes sure a person have to go through a foot bath and also only having one foot bath for the whole health clinic.

To find out how big the different spaces needed to be and which types of rooms were needed I was researching books and the internet, to be able to make the layout as accurate as possible.
– Ine Ringlund

We started the day by building a tent structure with tension. We placed pins on top on top of the wooden pieces (poles) and wrapped the string around the pin. We then took the string from one pole to another and then to the base, the tension was created to make the tent structure stable.

 Next, was to make a functional version of the curie box. Linden cut the pieces, and assembled the box and after a bit of detailing the box worked exactly as intended!

By opening one and one side of the box, it will unfold into a room that is 4,8 x 4,8 meters big.

– Ine Ringlund

As Inspiration for this project, we found a design competition, Architecture for Humanity, that had the purpose to build a mobile health clinic.  The winner of the competition was KHRAS, a danish architecture company located in Copenhagen. By using a container they made a clinic that could be used in several different ways, both as a large clinic and a small and simple clinic and there could be used several containers.

“In Africa, especially in remote areas, you don’t just get a spare part from down the road. So instead of one solution we wanted to come up with a system”

Other proposals for the competition:

AFH Founders Award: Gaston Tolila and Nicholas Gilliland, Paris, France

By extending the structure with tents, they have made the usage space bigger.

Honorable Mention: Robert Johnson, Los Angeles: 

On this structure they have also used tents to make a bigger floor space.

ArchNewsNow (02.12.2002) Downloaded 11.11.2014 from:  http://www.archnewsnow.com/features/Feature91.htm

Csinclair (unknown) Downloaded 11.11.2014 from: http://csinclair.readyhosting.com/programs/africa/finalists.html

For the roof structure we tried out different types by building models. We started with a simple triangle structure which is very stable. The second one we built, was with a gap between the two parts of the tent to make natural ventilation inside the tent.

For the third model, we mixed different aspects of the two former models. We chose the triangle structure from the first and the natural ventilation from the second.

This created both a stable structure and a structure with natural ventilation.

The next step is to make a model by using thinner string, and having real tension, so that we can see how the structure will react.

 – Ine Ringlund