What is "kerb" one might ask?
We want to imply that this care that comes to you at your "curb", hence "kerb". This is spelling in the dictionary for the pronunciation of the word curb.
The project is just as it sounds, healthcare on wheels. As mentioned in a previous blog of mine, Lena and I proposed at mid-term a form of mobile healthcare that would practically be available at your door step to the people of Lawndale. We pre-liminarily proposed a fleet of trucks that would go out into Lawndale every day to their prospective 10-min walking radii. The trucks had no where to plug in physically. They just stopped on the side of the street. The truck plans had included waiting areas and bathrooms in each truck type.
After mid-term the comments we received made us think about our design critically and we began to re-allocate the program with further designing the project to what we have now for our final presentation. We allocated the stops to areas where there were bus stops to take back the streets and make them safer for the community.
In the center of each radii is a hot-spot that is specifically designed for the people of lawndale. The hot-spot has a bus stop side and a healthcare side. The healthcare side has two private areas in which one can log into their healthcare profile and check-in, make appointments. refill prescriptions and more. It is also a place where one can plug into a wifi "hot-spot" and also check where the nearest truck is and the schedules.
Each truck stop was given a square or rectangular shaped building for the truck to plug into. When the truck is not there, it is a community space for all kinds of activities that get the community involved. When the truck is there, healthcare services are being given, creating a holistic wellness system. We designed a ribbon that would stretch across these "care nodes" within each radii that would interweave and connect each of these together architecturally.
When the radii overlap we have these "pockets of success" in which a "Care plaza" is introduced. These plazas take up more space and create a large community space in which more than one truck comes in. The trucks that plug in here are more of the specialty trucks and community focused trucks. In the day time you could have the grocery truck and a small farmers market pop up, creating density and activity in the pocket of success. At night you could have the shower/laundry truck and the housing truck come in to give people who need a place to stay somewhere to sleep for the night. By doing this, we can give them the dignity they deserve back. We focused on what we believed the individuals of the community would need rather than placing a building here or there and expecting them to come to it.
We also thought that the branding of this project was a key aspect to our design. We realized that after mid-term we were losing track that this was a project for a replacement hospital for Saint Anthony's. We are designing this for Saint Anthony's, it is not just a whole new project. Therefore we re-branded Saint Anthony's for this mobile healthcare system that we were designing. We thought it was important to address not only the logo and look of these trucks but also the technology that would play a key role in this. We did this by designing an interface that would be applied to a smartphone application or to the home screens of our hot-spots for those who don't have smartphones. This final step in our design phase was one that tied the whole project together.
If you are wondering about our next steps for this project check out Lena Reiff's interesting and insightful blog Kerb Care: Part 2 !
Images: Produced by Lena Reiff & Luz Upegui