Students in a Texas A&M University’s architecture-for-health design studio are readying to unveil their concepts for boat clinics — floating health facilities designed to provide healthcare services for millions of people who live in coastal areas in Vietnam and the Philippines.
The public is invited to see the students present their models and drawings at 2 p.m. Oct. 1 in the Wright Gallery, located in Buildng A of the Langford Architecture Center on the Texas A&M campus.
“Of Vietnam’s 84 million people, 17.4 million live in the Mekong River Delta, and in the Philippines nearly 90 million people live on 7,017 islands,” said studio instructor George Mann, holder of the Ronald L. Skaggs, FAIA & Joseph G. Sprague, FAIA Endowed Chair in Health Facilities Design.
“Many of these people who live outside the countries’ large metropolitan areas do not have access to health care or roads, but many live near waterways,” said Mann. “This proximity provides an opportunity for boat clinics to deliver primary health care and health education directly to populations in need.”
The student designers worked closely with Southeast Asian architecture and healthcare professionals to create their designs.
Michael Thaibinh, from Bangkok, Thailand, who eared a Master of Architecture degree at Texas A&M in 1996, and Nguyen Truong, a Vietnamese native and practicing architect currently studying for a Master of Urban and Regional Planning degree at Texas A&M advised the students, as did Prosperidad Luis, dean emeritus of the University of Philippines College of Architecture in Manila.
The three advisors have had numerous telephone conferences with the students and commented via email on their early designs.
In addition to working with Thaibinh, Truong and Luis, students researched the major causes of illness and death in Southeast Asia, as well as the region’s climate, geography and waterways.
“The designs for Vietnam emphasized smaller shallow draft vessels that could easily navigate the shallow and narrower tributaries of the heavily populated Mekong River Delta,” said Mann, adding that the Philippine designs call for larger craft for operating on the open seas.
Many of the designs, he said, provide storage areas for medicines, food, and supplies as well as modular units that can quickly be assembled onshore.
Power generators, water and water purification devices, searchlights for nighttime operations and rescue are in the clinic’s designs. All the boats have sleeping and dining quarters aboard for the crew, and some of the designs, said Mann, had a small treatment/operating room onboard.
Joining Mann advising the students were project co-directors C. Wayne Smith, associate professor of archaeology and director of Texas A&M’s Nautical Archaeology Program, Joseph McGraw, College of Architecture professor emeritus, and Texas A&M visiting scholar Kazuhiko Okamoto, assistant professor at the University of Tokyo’s Department of Architecture.
- September 29, 2008 -
