Under Wings of Care - Traveling Healthcare Centre in South East Asia

As part of a competition for building a traveling healthcare centre for South East Asia, orgainsed by Building Trust International, JDAP proposed, "Under Wings of Care" - a Modular, Collapsable, Lightweight and Transportable Bamboo based building system that could be set up at places that need it the most. The firm was awarded an Honourable Mention for the proposal.

Competition Text follows:

For a region that needs to rapidly expand the delivery of quality heathcare to a large under-served population - most of which is largely rural - focus for the traveling Healthcare Centre must be as much about its “approachability” as about its “relocatability”. Wings of Care takes a nuanced view of the sterile, forbidding spaces of healthcare and transforms them into Spaces of Joy that embrace their natural setting and provide a friendly, humane environment that is welcoming and reassuring to its patients. The building platform of the Centre is based on a robust, lightweight, easily transportable system with local bamboo as its primary component.

The dimensional limitation of the project is based on its transportability. For a Centre that must travel off highways and onto rural roads, the standard shipping container size was discarded in favour of a smaller module that can sit at the back of a 20-feet flatbed truck.

The primary structural component is a Fabric-covered Bamboo Parabolic Arch. The arch has pivoted arms that open up to form weather-protection canopies over the building openings. Seven arches open to form a 135° sector that makes up a single module. The circular form allows for shorter circulation paths while enclosing courtyards that then form the heart of the Centre.

There are two Courtyards around which the Centre is organised – the Out-patient facilities including Consulting Rooms, Medical store and large covered flexible waiting spaces cluster around the Outer Court, while the Inner Court forms a more secluded sanctum for the Recovery and Rehabilitation Centre and Operation Theatre.
The entire Centre is designed to be collapsible and stackable into a total of Six containers, which themselves form part of the Centre once it has been ‘deployed’!