Grantee: Ball State University
Principle Investigators: Anthony Costello
Year: 2020
Project Number: 2020.001
Status: COMPLETED
Educating the next generation of designers is a key objective of the NCMA Foundation. This architecture student design competition at Ball State University has for many years challenged architecture students to solve real world problems with concrete masonry.
Program Details:
The project will focus on the design of a medical clinic and disaster preparedness and recovery center for the Mudd Neighborhood, Abaco Islands, in the Bahamas. This neighborhood was totally destroyed by Hurricane Dorian in September of 2019 and was primarily inhabited by Haitian immigrants who fled Haiti in 1980 as part of the “Mariel Boatlift.”
In normal, daily use the medical clinic will serve the needs of residence of the Mudd Neighborhood from pre-natal to geriatric care. Scheduled physicals exams, inoculation and vaccinations will be carried out here. Emergency care, including minor surgery, will be conducted at the clinic. A small laboratory and pharmacy will be included to promote the “one stop” service aspect of the clinic. An EMT / ambulance unit will also be stationed here as part of both its the medical care and disaster assistance functions.
In order to serve as a disaster preparedness and recovery center, the facility will house administrative, communications and management offices, supply storage depot, and a vehicle storage and repair facility. In addition, the Clinic in a Can system will be employed to increase the medical care capabilities as well as a modified system to provide potable water, food service and sanitary/hygiene services prior to, during, and following a natural disaster.
This studio will combine investigation into the island’s traditional cast-in-place concrete and concrete masonry unit (block) construction techniques and the “Clinic in a Can,” an industrialized system for medical facilities that adaptively repurposes steel shipping containers. The Unit Design Competition will also be incorporated in the course.
Three or four, four person teams (A total of 12 or 16 students in course) will undertake this competition as well as the 2019-2020 Unit Design Competition in an elective course that will be open to both undergrad and graduate architecture & landscape architecture students.
Each team will produce the required deliverables as dictated by the instructor and in accordance with competition requirements. Each entry will take the form of mounted drawings and models that can be displayed once the competition has been completed. These boards will be self-explanatory although the student teams will present their designs for the student design competition orally before the jury. They will not be present when the jury discusses the entries but will return for jury comments and announcement of award winners. The competition documents will be formatted so that they facilitate both a physical exhibit and potential publication of a monograph.