i + D - May/June 2020 - 38

Brave New World - By Jessica Goldbogen Harlan

Safety First
"Although we find ourselves in unprecedented times,
building codes remain one of the strongest defenses
to keep our communities safe and protected," says
Michael Pfeiffer, senior vice president of technical
services at the International Code Council (ICC).
"As businesses have had to adjust and convert their
facilities, the codes have provided reliable safety
guidelines, making the efforts to adapt [varying
spaces to new uses] more effective and efficient.
Without the codes, there wouldn't be a starting point
or minimum standards for these projects."
At a time when building safety standards are more
important than ever, the current pandemic has often
hampered progress in changing or enforcing them.
"I think the biggest challenge for professionals in
the industry is how much of this work requires
person-to-person contact," says Nicole KuklokWaldman, lecturing professor of planning law and
entitlement at University of Southern California.
The Los Angeles offices for Building and Safety and
Planning are open, but Kuklok-Waldman reports that
the staff is only working remotely. "This makes it
hard to walk through complex issues or address
something quickly," she says. As an entitlement
consultant and lawyer, Kuklok-Waldman creates
code-based solutions that often require a detailed
discussion of the code and prior experience. "That's
really hard when you're dealing with a government
agency, dealing with a crisis, remotely," she adds.

The GHESKIO Tuberculosis Hospital
in Port au Prince, Haiti, was designed
by MASS Design Group.
(Image: Courtesy of MASS Design Group)

MASS Design Group, which has offices globally, is one organization that's helping pioneer
guidelines for buildings to make them safe for their occupants-both during the pandemic
and in better times. The company is no stranger to infectious disease control: It was
founded in Rwanda more than a decade ago to design medical facilities that reduced the
spread of infection and created healthier environments overall for recovering patients.
Currently, the organization has a team working with New York's Mount Sinai Hospital as it
navigates the treatment of COVID-19 patients. "It's amazing how they were able to pivot,
creating all sort of small, rapid hacks to fix the constraints they were faced with," Ashley
Marsh, a senior architect at MASS Design Group, says of the space-challenged hospital
that has little room for flexibility in such a dense urban environment.
For instance, because the old building had windows that opened-unheard of in more
modern medical facilities-the staff was able to remove the glass panes and replace them
with plywood in which a HEPA filter was inserted, creating negative pressure in patient
rooms that allowed clean air to enter and air with potential contagions to exit. Other more
minor hacks included using dry-erase markers to write on door windows so medical staff
could read patient information without entering the room, and to mark directions on floors
with tape for the influx of new staff who might be unfamiliar with the building.

Michael Pfeiffer,
International Code
Council (ICC)

Ashley Marsh,
MASS Design Group
(Image: Courtesy of
MASS Design Group)

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Information like this at Mount Sinai and other facilities across the nation is being collected
and used by MASS Design to create working documents that other businesses and
institutions can use to enhance the safety of their own buildings. The company's COVID
Design Response page on its website has documents on how to design spaces for
infection control, how to limit contagion in makeshift facilities, and how to redesign
hospital spaces to protect healthcare workers, with more documents in the works,
including a report on how construction sites can be managed and operated more safely.
"One of our biggest goals is to try to scale up. How can knowledge gained on the fly
eventually spread to impact millions of people around the world?" notes Marsh. The
company hopes to partner with Ariadne Labs to create a learning collaborative that will
disseminate this knowledge.

i+D - May/June 2020

20-05-20 17:05
i + D - May/June 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of i + D - May/June 2020
