SPONTANEOUS ARCHITECTURE: HEALTH CARE

Universal, Social, Private, Emergency. Recent discussions on health care are discussions of access, rights, and options. They are discussions with very personal and very corporate ramifications. From choosing one’s doctor and course of care to providing preventative and life-saving measures, the various health care systems under which we live affect everyday lives and decisions. Regardless of where one lives, health care security is one of the most basic determinants of quality of life.

Today, health care provision operates at multiple scales, from global to mobile to individual. International health care companies own and operate hospitals and clinics (both for- and not-for-profit) around the world. Health care systems exist at national and sub-national levels, through public policies and private insurance companies. In many underserved and emergency areas, medical care is delivered through mobile clinics. Still, the face of health care is usually that of the individual doctor who takes care of us. The recent US debates on health care include many topics, one of which is the effects of scale on the practice of medicine and the public’s access to it. What happens when health care is scaled up? What happens when it is scaled down?

Participants in April’s Spontaneous Architecture competition are invited to consider the question of scale in health care. Submissions should address one or more of the relevant levels and sizes of medical provision and can be institutional, organizational, or architectural in scale.

Submissions are single images, formatted in 8.5 inches by 11 inches (landscape), 300 dpi tiffs. Images must be anonymous, containing no identification of their creators. Submissions may (but are not required to) include up to 100 words of text. All submissions are due by 11:59PM on 15 April 2010.