In the early days of 2020's Spring Festival, a swift and unyielding novel coronavirus began its rampant spread within Wuhan, transcending boundaries from person to person. This sudden outbreak led to a dire situation where the designated infectious disease hospitals in Wuhan were overwhelmed, unable to accommodate the influx of infected individuals seeking treatment. To address this crisis, the government swiftly decided to erect two new hospitals: Huoshenshan Hospital and Leishenshan Hospital. The imperative was clear - these hospitals needed to be constructed with unprecedented speed, necessitating innovative approaches to construction.
The chosen solution was the utilization of modular container houses, a marked departure from the traditional method of erecting on-site color steel structures. These container mobile houses, also known as box-type board houses, promised vastly improved installation speed and practicality, essential for meeting the urgent demand for hospital facilities. This decision underscored the agility and adaptability of modular construction techniques in responding to emergent healthcare needs.
However, constructing hospitals to combat infectious diseases entails unique challenges in design and layout. The paramount objective is to sever the chain of infection and mitigate the risk of transmission across three critical dimensions: pathogens, hosts, and the environment. The architectural blueprint of an infectious disease hospital must meticulously delineate functional zones, emphasizing clean-dirty segregation and departmental routing. Specifically, the medical area should be subdivided into clean, semi-clean, and polluted zones, with distinct pathways designated for patients and medical staff to minimize cross-contamination and logistical risks.
Key challenges in the design process include effectively containing and disinfecting contaminated areas, controlling intermediate spaces to limit contamination spread, and safeguarding clean zones from potential contamination sources. Moreover, the design must prioritize the creation of a conducive medical environment for patients while ensuring the well-being of medical staff who operate within the facility for extended durations. A humanized, green, and ecologically sustainable indoor and outdoor environment is essential to foster healing and resilience amidst the healthcare crisis.
The adoption of prefabricated buildings, championed since 2015, has played a pivotal role in expediting the construction of Huoshenshan and Leishenshan Hospitals. Through continuous research, development, and industry-wide collaboration, container movable houses have evolved into a highly efficient construction solution. These modular structures undergo factory production, where meticulous attention is paid to frame processing, envelope production, pipeline installation, and interior decoration. The prefabricated units are then transported to the construction site for rapid assembly, significantly compressing the on-site construction timeline.
The hospitals' architecture, predominantly composed of 6m*3m container movable rooms, enables versatile configurations to accommodate different functional requirements such as wards, toilets, buffer rooms, patient corridors, and medical corridors. This modular approach effectively addresses the complexities of streamlining and partitioning within the hospital layout, optimizing operational efficiency and infection control measures.
