VACCINE DISTRIBUTION CENTRE
The temples of the periphery explores the architecture of infrastructure in Sydney's suburbia. Generating civic strategies, political and cultural agendas, territorial gestures and organisational schemes can trigger an architectural response open to the possibility of contemporary monumentality.
The covid 19 pandemic has had innumerable impacts on people, communities and governments informing incalculable health and financial repercussions. It is without a doubt that the roll-out of several vaccines earlier in the year created worldwide ecstasy as it meant a potential return to the normal life we once took for granted.
As architects, we are called to respond to countless existential and non existential elements through the design of space. By considering the grand and almost holy rank a vaccine will embed, it would be appropriate to respond to such ideas through an architecture that celebrates, welcomes and protects the vaccine.
The site for the Vaccine Distribution Centre is located in Lucas Heights, a suburb in southern Sydney. Being in close proximity to the Royal National Park, the site’s character is a dense bushland, at high risk of being exposed to bushfire threats.
The nature of the task is to respond to respond to the brief: designing a vaccine distribution centre and taking the site conditions into mind when doing so. The brief requires an additional response to a ‘hybrid program’ which is to be implemented and run parallel to the scheme.
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The ground level shows the courtyard. A series of seating areas are extruded downwards into the ground to create moments of dwelling, privacy and gathering for the users.
The first level shows the disitribution scheme. The capsules are plugged in to the building at specific locations, offloading the vaccine and taken to the cores to be sent to storage.
The second level shows the storage fridge being wrapped by the admin (office) space; a gesture which creates a layer of protection for the vaccine to be stored,
The ‘hybrid program’ of the vaccine distribution centre takes shape through an implementation of a design of a Hydropower System.
This hydropower system begins off-site: taking a run of water from the nearby Woronora River, 800m East of the site location. The diverted water runs through an underground pipe which leads the water to the vaccine centre. Here, a large turbine uses the rapid speed of the water flow to create energy. The turbine, attached to a power generator above, then turns energy into electricity, powering the Vaccine Distribution Centre. The two run-off pipes on either end are used to fill up the moat, surrounding the vaccine centre to create a protection zone from human and non-human threats.
The turbine also includes a catchment system, storing and pumping water upwards to be used to function the water curtain + sprinkler mechanism which runs on the roof’s boundary; offering another option to further protect the vaccine centre from bushfire hazards. The water that falls on the edges of the roof lands on the moat, creating a possibility for zero water waste and reusing the same water that power’s the vaccine centre,
The hydropower system also ends off-site: using a dispatch method to allow a full cycle of water flow that passess through the building. The dispatch pipe concludes at Barden’s Creek, 600m North-West of the site location.
The distribution scheme takes shape through the capsule plug-in systems. The circular windows can be unmounted which allows for the capsules to be plugged in and locked to the building. The capsules collect and are loaded with the vaccine from specific stop-overs. Then they are directed towards the building, unloaded with the vaccine, which is then taken to the refridgerated storage level above. This process is then repeated in reverse to distribute the vaccine.
The details above capture a deeper look into the design approach and legitimacy of construction methods.
The first detail explains the mounting/unmounting of the windows in the first level to be made available for the capsule(s) to plug in to the building.
The interior (right) shows the mounting scheme; the exterior (left) shows the plugin-rotate-lock technique to secure the capsule tubes.
The second detail explains the roof (ETFE) system. Excess hot air from the fridge is stored and run through a pipe system, made useful to pump up the ETFE pillows as a roofing system. A re-usable water system is also implemented to create a water curtain on the roof’s boundary as a fire-protection system.
The mock-up model served as a gateway to be introduced into the realisation of the project by modelling at a scale of 1:2. The mock-up designed shows the roof system: the ETFE and water curtain mechanisms.
The interior render explains the distribution, loading and unloading of the vaccine. A free floor plan is considered to allow for maximum manouvering space for incoming pallets and outgoing vaccine boxes. The more the vaccine is in demand, based on the performance of the nation/state in dealing with the pandemic, the more capsules will need to be plugged in order to respond to such demands.
The proposal for the Vaccine Distribution Centre is a challenge to the typology of distribution centres and a response to contextual events.
The Vaccine Distribution Centre embeds strategies, territorial gestures and strict organisational schemes to respond to a possibility to unravel a relationship to contemporary monumentality,
As architects we are to design spaces that plant existential and non-existential elements; spaces that are rich with meaning, purpose and have the possibility to trigger emotions.
These emotions should acknowledge the past; nostalgia, the present; currency and the future; unknown.
The justification to challenge the typology of a distribution centre is a direct response to the past and current conditions humanity is traversing; CHANGE.
The vaccine(s) stands for a key to the future, is symbolic of the freedom of humanity and a release from the shackles of chaos. The architectural response to house this almost-holy object should match such pedestal-status and through a relic-type sanctuary that indulges the current conditions.
The Vaccine Distribution Centre encapsulates the craziness, confusion, chaotic and strange emotions that the pandemic triggered and is still doing so. The abundance of elements. personality, soul and uniqueness, is a clear guide to the challenge this vaccine centre draws onto a typical design and scheme for a distribution and storage centre.