research maps finally

Here is the complete city-specific research on my sites, including the major transportation networks and healthcare facilities in each place. Now I am ready to model, woopee! I'm thinking, probably just for time's sake, I'm going to just concentrate on Cape Town and the network its GSK plant would distribute to - Mesaru and Omusati - to show the network IN ACTION.

bizarrchitecture

This post is really a display of the research I've been doing to find sites, and a beginning to each site's analysis. My post for Wednesday will return to the design and architecturing of the condition based on the information here and the decisions I made in this post. I KNOW I need to show you a lot of the things I describe in this text, and I WILL, but this is sort of brainstorming, analysis of what I've figured out, and the game plan.

I want to advance the idea of a healthcare system that infects civilization in the same way that AIDS has infected its populations.

A challenge I am working to address is defining the hierarchy, both architecturally and programmatically. What are the functions of the network at a series of scales?

The final and, I think, the most important challenge is picking a site or series of sites to focus on for the purposes of this project. The purpose would be to observe the system as it could exist in a variety of situations - its ability to adapt to the diverse socioeconomic, transportational, and need-based dilemmas that exist in the world is key in the proposal being successful.


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I. THE HIERARCHY

Previously, I had posted this image to describe the corporate hierarchy of GSK as a network. I'm going to stick to that general concept, except instead of "distribution cities" they will be "hubs," meaning that they will contain a manufacturing and distribution plant but it does not necessarily mean a city. I'll examine in further detail.

What HQ in London contains is the knowledge, the process (and patents), and the technology to produce lamiduvine and zidovudine. London distributes these things to the separate hubs in the chosen locations. This network is virtual; it purely exists within communicative means.

The hubs contain these items which apply the virtual materials acquired from London, the production of drugs, and the production of the pods and the equipment they involve. The hubs are the plants that not only produce the treatments themselves, but they produce their methods and means, the architecture that allows the drugs to serve their purpose. It is these hubs that convert the virtual materials into physical, functional materials. The hubs will also help knowledge to build, because they will also contain research which will gain knowledge that will travel both back to the HQ and will filter down to the pods.

The wellness pods are containers that can be installed in a certain simple framework - a framework that can be expanded upon as needed and a framework that is minimally invasive. The programs of these pods include: 1. a portable pharmacy (supplying an area with the needed drugs to treat its AIDS victims, see this previously posted image). 2. A portable doctor's office (or testing lab) which will be a room that can be either set in a remote village in order to test the population for AIDS, or it can be transferred to and installed within hospitals to function as an AIDS wing or AIDS section of the hospital. 3. A portable hospital room for those extremely ill or dying or an AIDS-related infection, willing to pay extra to have the treatment and room in the comfort of their own homes (see this image from the previous post). 4. A portable information center to educate the uneducated populations on what AIDS is, how it gets contracted, and providing birth control education and STI education.

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II. THE SITES

I defined the criteria for selecting manufacturing sites to this: central locations of transportation networks in their regions, areas with ample population to support and contribute to the functioning of these hubs, and regions where there is a need for AIDS treatment.

I've chosen the following sites to use as examples of a hub infecting a city.

Hyderabad, India is a logical site for a hub because it is located in a region where there is a high demand for AIDS medication, and it is a center for rail transportation in India, which is one of the main modes of transportation and shipment in India. There is also an airport in Hyderabad, which could provide an extra mode of access.

major railways in India
in relation to Hyderabad

Capetown, South Africa is a center for transportation in South Africa, and also has a port which opens up new routes of transportation and distribution for AIDS treatment. It is located in close proximity to poor areas, and the port access opens up the opportunity to ship the supplies up the coast to some of the other areas in dire need of treatment. In addition to rail and port, Capetown is one of the few cities in southern Africa with an airport.

major highways and railways of South Africa
in relation to Cape Town

The beauty of the pod is that it can be transported and applied virtually anywhere. The following are some recipients of pods that I will use as diverse examples of how they can be applied and implemented.

Varanasi, India is one of the larger cities in India, but the crime and poverty rate are higher than the other developed cities of India. The AIDS pandemic has struck Varanasi and its surrounding towns and villages harder than the rest of India. Class separation is evident, and while health technology is up-to-date, it reaches only the fortunate few. The economy is based around ancient crafts with a few cutting-edge institutions such as Texas Instruments plants and international universities placed within its boundaries. It is connected to Hyderabad by rail.

the route the treatment would take
from Hyderabad to Varanasi

Maseru, Lesotho is the capital of Lesotho. It is a small city of about 180,000, and is primarily comprised of low to middle class dwellings and a high unemployment rate. There is ample transportational access; it is located on the Caledon River (see map) which incidentally also runs through Capetown. There is a small international airport here, and two major highways run through it.
Omusati, Namibia is a region of Namibia with ample access to the Namibian port city of Skeletkuste. Transportation is extremely underdeveloped here, except for a massive freight road stretching across this northern wilderness. The healthcare system in this region is adequate at best; basic healthcare can be found but hospitals are few and underfunded. Like Maseru, it can be served by Cape Town as a hub.

the path treatment would take from Cape Town
to Maseru and Omusati

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III. OTHER AFFECTING NETWORKS

The GSK network is going to exist as a supplement to already present conditions in each location. At every site containing the location of a hub, the transportation methods and networks would be mapped and the GSK network would latch on - using the existing transportation conditions as a means transport these pods.

Hospitals that are already present - whether in cities, towns, or missionary hospitals in distant villages - will be mapped, and an AIDS wing will be made up of the aforementioned framework and placed alongside hospitals. In hub locations, the hub structures may exist as part of the hospital or an addition onto the hospital.Here I am zooming in a bit, and I've mapped the big transportation (mostly rails, that leave the city) and marked the significant hospitals.

Here I show the healthcare in Hyderabad as a network - making the hospital closest to the railroad leading to Varanasi the center of this mini-network. Perhaps this is how the GSK system can first invade the city at this point and attach onto the other hospitals via transportation, as an intra-city network.

I plan to do this level of analysis with all sites, whether they are hubs or not.
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VI. FORMAL IDEAS

I found this video of the AIDS virus infecting a human lymphocyte (white blood cell). What is happening in this video, is that the clump of cells starting out at the bottom have already been infected by the AIDS virus and are attacking the lymphocyte in the middle, violating the cell wall and causing the lymphocyte's insides to come out, a process called lysing (it pays to have biologically smart friends).

Architecturally, I would like the GSK network to act as a counter-infection on the population. In the same way that the virus enters a lymphocyte, takes control of it, and causes it to attack other lymphocytes, I want the architecture to infiltrate the population, take over, and spread. My idea for this is a collapsable, expandable, and multipliable structural system.

Stay tuned for more!

megaHEALTH

What would it mean to a remote village to have the opportunity for drugs with healing powers they never knew existed, or the opportunity to have the treatment with the equipment they need, and an accurate diagnosis of AIDS.

While this concept could be applied to a world of diseases, not just AIDS, for the purposes of this project I am focusing on AIDS because only GSK produces AIDS treatment drugs, and this concept is based through that company, which is headquartered in London, England.

I'll start from the largest scale, and work my way down. The HQ of GSK will be an entire city of parts to drug manufacturing plants (located outside of London), to be detached and transported to the manufacturing plants and locations in the map below (from the previous post).



The rings around the plants represent their production capacities based on the demand for AIDS treatment in that region, not the geographic region they serve. Because of the ever-changing world populations, and the spread of AIDS (reaching and affecting new and different populations as time passes, see this animation which maps the history of the virus's spread), these manufacturing plants' capacities will be easily altered by the detachability of and stackability of these resources that come from London.

These plants will subtly infiltrate the cities in which they are located, as shown below (see conceptual collage from previous post). They are subdivided into "wellness pods" which are small pods containing necessities for treating AIDS that can be transported to other cities as well as the most remote of areas. The animation shows one of these pods travelling to a remote area outside of the manufacturing city.


Here are a couple renderings of the system:




For the purposes of this project, I will be zooming in and focusing on Cape Town, South Africa and its surrounding region. One reason I am focusing here is that it is a good example of a town that produces AIDS treatment but sells it elsewhere, so that its own citizens do not receive the treatment (notice that it is not part of the megaContinent). Another reason is that the area that it is not serving has some of the highest prevalence of AIDS in the world, and therefore the highest demand for the drugs.



Here are a couple collages that put the model in the context of Cape Town.





These wellness pods will serve a few functions - one of which will be the transport of drugs, treatment and equipment, particularly to remote areas (shown below).



There is also the possibility of a new way of looking at hospiss care - GSK's wellness pods extending to those who can afford a more comfortable treatment system in their home.

megaHEALTH: the wellness explosion

This post is a preliminary look at my process to lead into Monday's post.

The problem is this: the drugs needed to treat AIDS are produced by GSK all over the planet but are not reaching all the areas they need them. The idea is this: that the GSK megaHEALTH empire must self-divide and disperse itself to the distant areas of the planet where it is most lacked. So the question is this: how can these supplies be efficiently transported to these areas?

In the most rural areas, part of the problem is that if the drugs reach these villages, by way of charity or another form of goodwill, the people don't know who is to get the drugs and how they are to take them. Not only is the spread of medication needed, assistance with drugs and equipment - such as testing equipment - is needed.

I've chosen to pursue megaHEALTH at three different scales: the global scale, the regional scale, and the human scale, and the following images and explanations should show the direction I want to go.

My investigation of the global scale involves unifying the GSK empire and reworking the network. Each country (and some groups of countries) has a branch of GSK that exists at its own entity and privately sells to whatever government and/or private healthcare system can afford the drugs. As you can tell from the following mapping from the previous assignment, the network is inefficient.

current GSK distribution network

To help improve this problem, I wish to regionalize these 82 manufacturing plants, which are all located in or just outside of major cities. This is a clearer map very simply mapping the current locations of GSK.

GSK's manufacturing plants

The next map indicates what it would mean to regionalize the current plants. The rings indicate the particular plant's production capacity.

regionalizing the current GSK plants

As you can see from this previous map, regionalizing the plants as they are located does little good to many areas, even in the United States. Here is a map strategically relocating these plants based on population density and AIDS prevalence, and their production capacities are reestablished according to the prevalence of AIDS in the region.

relocated GSK plants

relocated GSK plants and reestablished production capacities

Reworking the network was a simple redirection of paths; to become more detailed, we have to examine this on a regional scale. What is the relationship between the manufacturing plant and its own city, the manufacturing plant and its neighboring cities, and most importantly for this project, the plant and the surrounding "remote locations."

conceptual collage of the "wellness pods" being distributed in a region

The first two scales are network and transit related. These are important to consider because it is a global company which addresses a global crisis, but it is also important to consider what exactly is being transported. Mechanically, what is the process by which the drugs will reach another city or a remote location? Once they are there, how will they be administered - how will the materials and the information be spread? AIDS is a human condition, and so it is quite crucial to address the human scale at an intense level of detail.

My next post will include a detail of what the headquarters (England) will do as a city, a city which is the root of the manufacturing plants mapped all over the planet. This city will distribute these, which are composed of the pods, which will be distributed outward to the cities and villages. This is shown in the diagram below. The next post will include details of each of these levels.

megaHEALTH

Archigram, in the Plug-In City (see this post for some more analysis), proposes a series of units - rooms, energy, supplies, etc. - that are stored in silos and transported and "plugged" into other silos by way of trains, moving along tracks. I propose, now, that we view healthcare in this way - by making the transportation of these drugs from GSK manufacturing plants more efficient to the populations that need them, and the ability to transport hospital rooms to areas that can treat AIDS patients perhaps could help to break up the AIDS megaContinent and spread treatment into remote areas.





In this animation, these units are shown as floating to different areas of sub-Saharan Africa, but perhaps they are carried by cranes, or along paths.

pandemic: the AIDS effect

Once thought to be the new Black Plague, AIDS has exploded across the globe in less than half of a century, claiming the lives of millions. It is estimated that there are well over 33 million people infected as of 2004.

In my first presentation, I examine the statistical effects of AIDS on the general population. Now, I am setting this opposed to the availability of treatments for the infection.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) is the only drug company in the world to produce the chemical compounds that make up the composition of every brand of medicine used to treat AIDS. The most significant of these compounds are lamiduvine and zidovudine.

This series of mappings (generated by statistics as of 2005) aims to examine the AIDS pandemic as it infects world populations, and to compare it to the amount, availability, and location of these drugs produced by GSK. The following four mappings follow the key provided to the right. Any images can be clicked for a larger view.

reduction of the population

according to AIDS infections

GSK's manufacturing plants and the
percentages of treatment received by areas,
as an addition to the population.
The blue areas designate where more than 10% of the infected population
is able to receive treatment.

examining the GSK network only.
Make note of the locations of manufacturing plants
versus the areas of significantly treated populations.

When you examine each of these mappings under a real-world road map, you can see (something probably already obvious) that the more developed areas have more manufacturing plants. However, it is interesting to point out that while they may have more manufacturing plants, they don't necessarily have a higher treatment availability. In some cases, such as in Jamaica, treatment is manufactured but sold to other places, and the AIDS patients indigenous to Jamaica aren't receiving the treatment they need.

a satellite photo of the Earth superimposed
upon the treated population

the "world at night" imposed on the populations that

receive treatment

solar heat absorption map

superimposed upon the treated population

The following maps represent a rearrangement of population - the population that is treated for AIDS. It is referred to as the "GSK empire" and its manufacturing plants which are in the same scenario as the one in Jamaica are excluded from this megaContinent. It is placed opposed to the total untreated AIDS victims of the world, represented as negative land masses. The continent is composed of the treatment areas, arranged on top of each other according to the cities from which they receive the treatments. Take special notice of the manufacturing plants located outside of the continent but which fully contribute to supporting the megaContinent.


Here, the real-world map has been super-imposed on the megaContinent, showing the joining and connection of the most populated areas in the world.

the "world at night" as a treated megaContinent

solar heat absorption as a treated megaContinent

The next step, is to break apart this mass of healthcare and develop a means to transport these important drugs to the most remote corners of the Earth - the crisis areas that need them the most. Perhaps it can be a network with a series of travelling units containing these drugs, much like Archigram's Plug-In City proposes. The goal must be to break the megaContinent into small, functional, moveable pieces - components of a megaHealthcare facility that spreads the research and innovation of the developed world to the isolated ends of the globe.

So we know where AIDS is...now what about the treatment?

I have spent my time researching the coverage of treatments in terms of the percentage of infected people in each country who are treated, as of 2005.

These two maps show (first) the prevalence of AIDS in 2005 and (second) the percentage of AIDS populations reached by treatment. The lighter areas in the first map indicate a higher percentage of AIDS prevalence, and the lighter areas in the second map indicate a higher percentage of treatment coverage.

the following map overlays the treatment coverage with the prevalence of 2005.