CLT  Wooden Emergency Hospital

Facing global coronavirus pandemic we are all on the same boat, to prevent an overwhelmed healthcare system and give patients a better treatment space. Casagrande Laboratory has been working hard together with Bjørnådal Arkitektstudio and Sjaelso Finland. Designing a solution where one can fast build emergency hospitals on the parking lots of existing hospitals.

We are using prefabricated engineered wooden modules, measuring 2,5 x 5 meters – the same as one car parking place.

The construction material is CLT cross-laminated timber, which is very strong but 5-times lighter than concrete. We need very little foundations or no foundations at all. For example, the Tikku micro-apartment house which we have built in Finland, the UK and Belgium is 3-floors high and uses the same size modules. This doesn’t require any foundation.

With the CLT Emergency Hospital, the construction methodology is the same as with prefabricated modular apartment buildings – only simpler. We can assemble different temporary combinations of patient treatment and other modules. The same modules can be disassembled and transported from place to place.

The CLT Emergency Hospital is built on the hospital parking lots. Outdoors the CLT is thick enough to insulate the building and in parking caves and halls the dimensions can be thinner. For fast construction, we don’t need scaffoldings, a mobile crane is enough to assemble the modules to the desired configuration – like Legos.

Finland has good capacity in realizing the proposed concept. We have three CLT factories in Pohjanmaa and Kuhmo and many factories with the capacity for pre-fabricating and equipping the modules. Transportation and construction on-site are very fast. The light and strong CLT modules can also be air-lifted to confront global pandemic.

The detailed design and construction of the prototype hospital should start immediately.

 

Any questions or cooperation idea?

E-mail us!  moi@casagrandelaboratory.com