Mobile clinic built at Wellcome Collection en route to next global health emergency

A real mobile health clinic has been built for the first time at Wellcome Collection. Designed for Doctors of the World by Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners and BuroHappold Engineering with ChapmanBDSP, the Global Clinic demonstrates how architecture can respond to a worldwide issue in health today.

Visitors have the opportunity to see the first complete version of the Global Clinic in Wellcome Collection’s Gallery 2, and it will be deployed for use in a location where it is needed immediately following its presentation at Wellcome Collection.

The clinic has been developed to meet the urgent need to provide flexible, robust structures for delivering healthcare in emergency situations and remote locations all over the world, where tents prove too flimsy and shipping containers too difficult to transport. Independent humanitarian charity Doctors of the World has worked with architects Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners (RSHP) and engineers BuroHappold with ChapmanBDSP to find an innovative solution. Together they have produced a clinic building made from plywood and constructed by a CNC (computer numerical control) machine, which is both adaptable and strong. Easy to transport and build, these structures hold the potential to be the temporary health clinic of the future.

The Global Clinic was chosen from an open call to realise a full-scale architectural project within Wellcome Collection’s first-floor gallery. It is presented alongside prototypes, as well as concepts and background research relating to its design and development. The work of a group of young designers aged 14 to 19 is also on display, including ideas for furniture or tools that could be used alongside the clinic in the field.

The clinic is part of ‘Living with Buildings’, Wellcome Collection’s major exhibition, which spans two galleries to examine the positive and negative influence buildings have on our health and wellbeing. From Dickensian slums to high-rise towers and the design principles that have inspired hospitals, health centres and therapeutic spaces, it includes buildings designed by Lubetkin, Goldfinger and Aalto, and works by artists Camille Pissarro, Andreas Gursky and Giles Round.

‘Living with Buildings’ is curated by Emily Sargent, and is at Wellcome Collection until 3 March 2019. ‘Global Clinic’ runs until 22 April 2019.

The exhibition has inspired a book – ‘Living with Buildings and Walking with Ghosts’ – by bestselling author Iain Sinclair, published by Wellcome Collection and Profile Books.