Iso-Pavilion: Isolation Treatment Center

Innovative buildings grow from the ideas and coordination of architects, engineers, contractors, financiers and others. I’ve designed some of the world’s best airports, museums, industrial, semiconductor, educational, commercial, and housing. These projects have one thing in common: they succeeded from talented people around the world framing problems by stripes, sorting them by discipline, fanning out missions to the most appropriate eyes and productive minds. As principal investigator I have led and catalysed significant results.

I've evolved from builder, to draftsman, to programmer of Building Information Models (BIM) and simulations, to project manager, up to a US Operations- BIM Lead on a multi-billion-dollar semiconductor ChipFab. I have been at the forefront in the use of the best tools and practices to build results within the landscape of constructability. Fulfilling our agreements' metes and bounds is paramount in leadership with follow-though going hand-in-hand to lift the inspiration of design into reality.

Healthcare infrastructure is under-equipped to contain the highly infectious and cascading effect of Covid-19. Retrofitting existing institutional buildings to increase containment is akin to turning the Titanic. Erecting makeshift tents/sheds/containers to provide treatment outside simply expands infected areas.

Produce our mobile, modular Iso-Pavilion design with cleanroom technology in a honeycomb structure that provides sanitized, isolation beds (10/Pavilion) outside institutions. Transportation, government, education, and commercial can isolate the problem, treat patients, protect healthcare workers, and promote their core mission with affordable healthcare capacity.

The required level of isolation need not be prohibitively expensive to most of humanity. Int’l hospital isolation standards (Class-Q) requires over 140 SqM per bed rendering them unaffordable. Iso-Pavilion achieves an airlocked and pressure-controlled safe environment averaging only 16 SqM per bed. The biosafe principles are scaled with sustainable construction and embedded in the strongest, lightest, and most economical geometry to make affordable modular Covid Treatment Centers worldwide.

Covid deaths of healthcare workers: US exceeded 600 (KHN-4/2/20). UK was 119 (NHS- 4/29/20), In 2 months 100 doctors died (Lombardi-Italy CNN), and the healthcare in several African nations are at risk (NYT-6/27/20).

“Cascade effects” are challenging. To address the unforeseen links in a chain of events throughout a core solution and stop this cascading failure in healthcare is our goal. This effect is the heart of the problem silently spreading Covid 19. Many country's whose core healthcare assets rely primarily on protocols with PPE and hand sanitizers to protect workers will likely fail.

3 Levels

Level-1: Patients, the primary carriers spread infections in institutions. When transported to healthcare facilities the next step occurs.

Level-2: PPE are only a thin barriers providing a narrow margin of safety with a wide margin of error. Staff in PPE circulating throughout healthcare facilities, even with the greatest care/wear/disposal, leaves too small a margin between sanitized and infected areas.

Level-3: Healthcare facilities, unable to disinfect and contain the virus, seem to be the “cause” of infected workers, but the failure happens in-part across each level.

Globally, institutions, transportation, offices, large residential complexes, and most hospitals are not designed to contain and/or disinfect Covid-19.

Iso-Pavilion pops-up adjacent to hospitals, land/air/seaports, or as independent facilities anywhere people need diagnosis and treatment for Covid-19. This facility maintains containment using air pressure between separate clean and infected zones. Laminar air movement maintains lower transmission in the CCU. The facilities’ air and surfaces are safely sanitized using UV to minimize contagions throughout the Pavilion. Healthcare workers pass through airlocks to maintain the clean & safe environment. We have a higher level of environmental protection that reflects Covid’s threat, not what "was" medically standard.

Patients are:

1. Served medical air (O2) at each bed.
2. Remotely monitored from a centrally located Nurses station.
3. Isolated by an airlock and negative pressure to contain infections.
4. Provided in-room bathroom for sanitary convenience.
5. Served by Air Handling Units supplying clean/filtered 100% fresh air.
6. In an environment continually removing contaminated air through laminar airflow.
7. In a room with a dedicated Air Handling Unit exhausting air out.
8. The exhaust system uses VGI to disinfect 100% air.

Healthcare workers are:

1. in a positive pressure Nurses Station pushing clean air-out, stopping migration of contaminates in.
2. surrounded by floors/walls/ceilings with smooth anti-germicidal surfaces and non-contact controls to minimize cleaning and infection transmission.

I've been in India and started Sunlight 5 years ago. Our core modular of Iso-Pavilion is the same system for a predecessor building called Honeycomb Village (HV). During the development of HV we listened to thousands of people across the country from Sadhu in Kumbh Mela, to migrants in Dharavi, to flood victims in Chennai, to developers in Bangalore, and politicians in Delhi. We learned about many of India’s core challenges and understand the structural problems. These same problems are the prime factors keeping over half the world's population in poverty according to the UNHCR-A/HRC/34/51.

Two factors: Cost & Time to set-up buildings are common to both housing and our current urgent medical needs. We added cleanroom systems to our pavilion to create air pressure that will isolate the 5 Critical Care Units. The pavilion houses 10 Covid treatment beds (2/CCU). These Pavilions may be manufactured/delivered starting under $50/bed/night (CapEx/OpEx amortized). This building breakthrough will allow people access to appropriate medical services and protect healthcare. Scale-up building production to high volume and the cost/bed/night can drop below $25/night. A Terafactory operating 24/7/365 with robotic production Sunlight could produce the world’s most affordable medical/residential buildings delivered anywhere in the world. 

Most building are built in the ground. From years of architectural experience in the semiconductor industry and making cleanrooms function at the highest levels imaginable for nanoscale production I learned a secret. There's a potential to build everything on a raised-platform. This elevated plane gives room below-deck for functions of the "Village": distribution of water, electricity, digital, and sanitary. The space above-deck is where people, their surroundings, neighbors, and their lives live. It's a simple concept, but powerful, like the idea of democracy. Elevate people traditionally living in the dirt to a clean plane to lift their sense of self-worth.  

I've spent a lifetime looking at people through the lens of architectural challenges. As an architect/engineer I have a unique viewpoint that sees dynamic forms revolve through the functional algorithms in an all-too human context. After decades studying the symmetry of honeycomb (bees, structure, efficiency, etc.) I received an invitation to design a small housing scheme. My invitation said: design housing for 1M people for India's Kumbh Mela. I took this challenge and in few weeks had penned-out the typology of Honeycomb Village (HV) synthesizing the power of geometry, strength of materials, in an architechtonic of human scale. I left for India in June, 2015 and planned to stay two weeks. 

After seeing the potential of producing housing on a global scale I devoted all my personal resources to realize HV and have never looked back. In cities along the way (BOM/AMD/BLR/KAL/etc) I've met hundreds of like-minded architects, engineers, educators, and everyday people who have the same shared-dream. Many have shared their snippets of what housing, community, means in their social context. I recognize them, their efforts, and support in the end of the presentation (HV video). Tata Trusts was an early supporter who championed our first R&D efforts.

I’ve wondered why I feel at home travelling abroad. My family tree goes back 350 years in NY. Under that tree stands bloodlines that may extend throughout the world back in time. Now as I stand here and look-out at people, their culture, their habits, and their foibles I see many of the qualities we see in America. Only the dances are one-step back, or the songs are a few notes ahead, and the food tastes like Broadway take-out, only better. Our unique cultures, however unfamiliar, are seldom as distant as people think. Genetically the differences between two of the most distant peoples on earth are less than nanosecond apart and probably entangled on some quantum level. 

Shelter is part of our primordial being. Here-and-Now housing is rooted in our shared experience. That UNHCR study about the commoditization of housing showed me how deeply divided the world has become. If allowed to continue, the haves and have-nots are heading for (if not over) an economic cliff of biblical proportions. My professional responsibility as an architect has never been to design more gold-plated, marble clad baubles. Publishing architecture in glossy magazines to impress colleagues is simply narcissism to no end.

Our research was an essential phase to vet availability of regional materials, test construction methods, and weigh local factors in making Modular the broad solution to serve Pan-India and her varied climate conditions.

Our goal is a housing solution that’s lightweight, strong, fast/easy to raise, sustainable, and vastly inexpensive. Unfortunately, some had expectations this solution could be rushed with love. That desire, however noble, misunderstands reality. Many wanted to just do “something” rather than take the time good design requires, and some others didn’t understand how that essential balance of our weight/strength/time/cost matrix would be achieved (even I couldn’t tell for years).

But patience for that essential balance is in hand. We have collaborated with some of the world’s finest A/E/C professionals at Bosch, Buro Happold, and Rambol to simulated Iso-Pavilion’s performance across the range of variables: loads, utility capacity, area, environmental, and other considerations to make the most efficient housing system.

We have completed the R&D phase and prototyped parts of the entire Pavilion, we’ve begun 3D printed assemblies and refined the design. Statistical methods (Deming) have been working in the background of our professional practice to unlock efficacy.

Now we are poised to start manufacturing and need additional resources to gear-up our first run. We are making a manufactured solution, not mixing cement. We have a clear and concise list of the infrastructure and materials required and we’re ready to move beyond mere mock-ups and into manufacturing the first of many Pavilions to come.

Our early steel deck iterations failed: too heavy and awkward, when minimized in wood and lighten, they failed at strength. Then we shifted to carbon fiber and the featherweight decks became prohibitively expensive, and on and on. Over 2 years expending significant resources, time, and energy dismayed many. I kept a statistical model going to see the trajectory and, while not easy or fun, I could see the steady progress. One form factor changed our ability to make each deck light, strong, resilient, sustainable, and dirt-cheap. Made of just two materials: mild steel (MS) sheets and PolyUrethane (PU) the sealed unit deck (30mm thick) became a battle-cry for what tenacity can wring-out of experience.

Our economics got tight, we buckled down and made-do with the materials at hand. The early tensile roof design failed in the prototype, we shifted form and made a lighter, cost effective solution. When thieves took our tools at night, we made the necessary changes to safe-guard our compound. Set-backs occur, but our progress has exceeded the losses. The distributed manufacturing model (used in semiconductor) was proven a wrong model for this place and time. Having one facility to consolidate manufacturing has been the key. 

During my undergraduate program (UW-Madison) I volunteered serving as a Writer/Associate Editor/Editor of the Wisconsin Engineer Magazine from 1983-85. During my editorship Our analog “paste-up” copy transitioned to digital. I acquired WEM’s first computers for the office and we moved editing and mark-ups online. Those years were the kind of trial-by-fire experience that sheds light on leadership. For me the lessons came from fellow students, faculty, and John Bollinger, Dean of Engineering.

In 2008, as the US-BIM Lead of M+W Zander I lead the transition from CAD to BIM across 12 disciplines in 7 US offices for semiconductor ChipFab design and construction.

Beginning 2015, Sunlight has given opportunities to hundreds of students across India. Additionally, young architects-engineers have used HV design to explore their own interests, contributed to website, social media, and outreach efforts. This contributed greatly to our primary focus developing HV and has built community around paid, intern, and volunteer staff.

Since March, Sunlight’s associated firms have followed my leadership by example. My own commitment (900 hours/4 months) provided Iso-Pavilion simulations, drawings, specifications, writing, and cost estimate to them in a timely manner. They in-turn lent their engineering expertise to our effort. 

Many architects design expensive buildings with the finest materials. Sunlight recognized a different path in our 2018 whitepaper. We described the likely catastrophic consequence of robotics/AI to global housing. WEF estimated 50% job loss globally in a short span. That unemployment rate averaged over 10 years in India would exceed 100,000 people per day. Loss of housing is the first major disruption if large-scale technologies move-in and decimate human employment. 10 years wasn't a "liberal" assessment, it turns out that estimate wasn't conservative enough.

2020 IMF Reports global unemployment in developed nations alone doubled from 4.2% to 8.4% in less-than 6 months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Undeveloped nations (no data) have been hit significantly harder as their high manufacturing and labor employment sector wasn’t compatible with the Work-From-Home scheme. As national economies are quickly running out of time and money the first actions being initiated from Calcutta to California are? . . . Evictions, the proof is self-evident.

High volume, low cost modular buildings for medical, housing, and education are needed around the world. We can’t start soon enough and they can’t be built fast enough for the demand of Covid Treatment Centers. In a larger context, global poverty is another pandemic currently over 1B people. Now the impoverished will include: destitute, lower, and middle income families. Many of these new “residents” may not take to the streets quietly. Sunlight's innovation is an infrastructural alternative to social disintegration. Building housing manufacturing facilities for global deployment is social “insurance”.

Housing Example:

I worked for years on the reconstruction of a 2,500 year old building (Parthenon ~500 BC) and know a sense of timelessness. The notion of permanence is ever present when people talk about their home, business, or temple that suggests we can make finite things infinite. However, our lives are finite and many of the problems societies face are wrapped in sustainability’s shadow.

The common ground between the quality of the housing for the “Haves” and the quantity for the “Have Nots” is the ground. The concept of land-ownership is ground zero of this current seismic change.

Owners who want to build “permanent” structures on “their” land as a way of controlling their destiny are also limiting global resources for all of humanity. For example: Nero's Golden Palace occupied 200 acres in the center of Rome. Society reinforces control with building codes and laws that have grown-up to “protect” these assets. The land-ownership model together with building codes are two central causes limiting the availability of minimum quality housing. Our "free-market" created this man-made scarcity coupled with population that has driven housing costs above the median income. This reinforces the land-value scheme for owners to drive more scarcity, in-turn displacing greater percentage of the population. The concurrent bind of building codes protecting life safety simultaneously being the wedge between the Haves and Have Nots is deplorable.

I'm not politically savvy enough to craft legislation that would start to dismantle this stranglehold on housing. But as an architect/engineer I know there is power in design. The will of people who see solutions to our fundamental challenges: civil rights, freedom of speech, rights to assembly, etc. have in the past asserted their rights. The UN recognizes affordable housing as a basic human right. 

Having the resources to put up Iso-Pavilion in the face of the pandemic, put Honeycomb Village up for waves of migrants, and other affordable solutions for the people at the lowest rungs of the economic ladder is a boost that's critical to transform a system serving a few into a viable solution for the many.

>100 currently

>1M in the next year

>1B in the next 5 years

Affordable buildings are the foundation of communities, society, and its economy. When the false scarcity described above is undermined by systematic design/deployment of quality buildings for housing, education, and medical needs there are few people in the world who will not be directly served by the access to these fundamental needs for generations to come.

Deploying Sunlight's modular buildings is achievable by working at the grassroots level and up. Since 2015, working with Adv. Vinod Shetty (Bombay) and others Sunlight's development plan has engaged communities by showing residents, organizers, community activists, and others an alternative to the "pucca" housing using scrap materials. Their response to the design, materials, and cost has been very positive. Sunlight's main hurdle has been not having enough resources to launch manufacturing.

This year we have the necessary space in a manufacturing location, assembly designs developed and tested, and a critical mass of interested parties to address the Covid crisis to start our operations. Our rate of production will be a critical step in the process of scaling-up. Both to meet demands for Covid Treatment Centers and parallelly creating housing (same Pavilion platform and shell without medical HVAC and airlocks).

In the next five years Sunlight's plan is a two-pronged approach to ensure success. Covid's current pandemic trajectory may be curtailed by anything from a vaccine to herd immunity. Iso-Pavilion will have 10 year useful life as portable medical facilities, AND Sunlight's system will continue to produce the base Pavilion for affordable residential, educational, and commercial buildings.

One significant barrier in India is the graft and corruption in the public sector. As Sunlight’s presented our modular building design at the highest levels of government (Global Housing Technology Challenge), the implementation have been kicked down to lower levels where "liasons" (perhaps expecting bribes) were a factor. In the case of Delhi and Mumbai metro works key persons have blocked Sunlight because of a threat (real or perceived) to their control and/or profit outside their official duties.

Amid the pandemic the same profiteering is at work. The Mumbai government commissioned a jumbo Covid facility in BKC and paid over inr 8,000/sqf ($116/sqf). These funds only created a basic shed construction that will do little to reduced transmission. Similar stories are playing out in other cities around the world as the demand for Covid treatment beds grows. Partly, this has occurred because better solutions with lower cost has not been made available. 

Another significant barrier in India is systemic is risk aversion. If a new product/service doesn’t already have a proven track record, captive market, or other factors making the “innovation” a safe bet, then it’s likely that almost no one will take a financial risk.  

One of Sunlight's partners, Klenzaids (an HVAC subsidiary of Bosch), are experts in the area of bio-containment. In collaboration with them we have reached key medical decision makers in ICMR and engaged dialog with members of the medical ministries in several metros of India. Through our dedicated research and development effort we are able to identify main causes of facility infections and explain the risks jumbo facilities pose. We hope to secure contracts for several sites with multiple Pavilions in collaboration with their leadership and guidance.

Sunlight received a small seed grant from Tata Trusts in our first year (2016) for Honeycomb Village. Since then three partnerships have developed around Iso-Pavilion beginning in March 2020. Four primary disciplines: Arch, Mech, Struct, and Medical have collaborated to make Iso-Pavilion ready for production. 

Sunlight has led our Architectural team (5) to frame the system based on modular design principals

Klenzaids have made a pro-bono contribution with the design and manufacturing of the Pavilion’s HVAC.

Er. Anil Hira, Principal Engineer with Buro-Happold has designed the structural system. 

Valentine D’Cruz, Chief Medical Officer has reviewed and advised the scope of the medical gas & equipment capacities (water, air, digital, electrical) systems. 

To date neither I nor these primary collaborators have been paid. Our agreement is that Sunlight, upon sales of Pavilions will repay individuals for their services rendered. A few “investors” have expressed interest, but none are willing to enter funding negotiations before we succeed.

Dozens of advisors, promoters, and assistance have come from public and private enterprises throughout this journey that are recognized at the end of the GHTC video. 

Sunlight was formed as a social business enterprise focused on serving the greatest number of people imaginable in the shortest development cycle with a sustainable revenue model. At every level of business development, our goal’s been the same: reduce the costs to the beneficiaries. 

Governments, hospitals, and other institutions are essential intermediaries, but in the end the cost per Covid treatment bed for patients is simply a matter of life or death. Sunlight’s business model canvass has given us a view of our progress and direction over the last 5 years to understand our mission from the beneficiaries point of view and focus on Iso-Pavilion’s central value proposition.

Sunlight’s 5-year forecast starts with a conservative estimate where minimal Pavilion sales will meet material, labor, distribution and overhead expenses to continue production in our first facility. Profits being reinvested to ramp-up sales/production across multiple facilities to reach the first level economy-of-scale (~1,000 units). This first level will streamline our manufacturing to lower overhead and reduce the Pavilion’s base price. The second level will refocus production methods to high speed Pavilion production (~100,000 units) starting in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. That scale will allow further savings and a second Pavilion price-drop. The third level is where automation, primarily robotic production facilities, will be located on every continent. Sunlight's tera-factories will run 24/7/365 making all pavilion assemblies at the highest rate possible to distribute Pavilions globally at the lowest price. 

As stated earlier the commoditization of buildings, particularly housing, is driven by exaggerated profit incentives that have taken the market further afield from the actual needs of our human population than at any other time in history. Those forces focus vast resources to build more expensive accommodations for fewer and fewer people. Narrowing the market has been decades in the making with fewer and fewer wealthy customers being chased by more and more hungry land owners and speculators. The vacancy rate often reported in real estate journals and governments under-reports un-occupied buildings to dampen the perception of available properties to regulators and prop-up prices. The tipping point of this flawed system has already passed as cities, overripe with warehoused buildings, are buckling from the deadweight of vacancy. 

How will Sunlight be financial sustainable in this market?

Simple, we’ll provide the buildings people need at affordable rates by manufacturing buildings at scale. 

The social and economic values of Sunlight's mission are aligned as an integrated enterprise where our products and services can make direct impact and let market forces drive the most appropriate products and services. Like Tesla, we’re confident the market will favor better products and utility services that meet the needs at an affordable price.

The current demand in the healthcare for Iso-Pavilion is clearly viable to start production and once stable production is achieved Sunlight's mission can continue in healthcare and expand into housing, education, and sanitary pavilions. Each market will gain greater volume for greater value.

Sunlight would like a grant of $300-500K to expand Iso-Pavilion manufacturing facilities, training programs, and outreach to support Covid-19 diagnosis and treatment with the medical community in India and abroad. Ramping-up production is a capital intensive venture. Sunlight's mission would greatly benefit from access to these funds to elevate our efforts.

In Feb, 2016 Sunlight received a grant from Tata Trust (Mumbai) of ~$60k to start R&D, design detailing, and (housing) pavilion prototyping. In the last 12 months I have self-funded Sunlight to modify the prototype Pavilion, develop and complete Iso-Pavilion design. We are now prepared to commence manufacturing. Sunlight has a secure facility for manufacturing complete pavilions with all the tools and staff needed for production. 

We have concurrently applied to DERBI, USISTEF, & Islamic Fund for grants ranging from $50-500K. Sunlight is awaiting their reply. 

We have spoken with numerous government departments in India (ICRM, Govt's. Maharashtra, Delhi, Haryana, and Karnataka about direct contract sales. Sunlight is in on-going discussions. 

We have approached investors for equity financing. However, our long experience in India has proven that funding for real innovation is significantly less than US due to the high risk aversion. The significant investors Pan-India typically favors Indian start-ups based on idea-copy (FlipCart/Amazon, Ola/Uber, etc). Ground breaking innovation is a tough row to hoe....

Sunlight's Business Manager- Anand Banerjee has worked developing our business model canvas since 2018 and completed our 5 year forecast. Our cash flow projections using conservative sales figures (1 Pavilion/month) and average production and overhead expenses show a sustainable net margin between 6-9% during the first year. This margin grows to over 15% in years 2-5 as production expands with our economies of scale and continuous improvement.

Ar. Santiago Calatrava: “The most touching thing that anyone can say to me is that I have done something beautiful for the community.” 

My career has seen many years in diverse communities to design many building types. Neither billion-dollar airports (Logan and Toronto) nor ChipFabs (Globalfoundries and Intel) can hold a candle to the beauty of this modular building project in term of the greatest potential good for humanity. 

Iso-Pavilion in concert with our medical community can turn the tides on a pandemic because the isolation of our solution is capable of containing the transmissive nature of the Covid problem within healthcare. Protecting these workers is essential and should be paramount to every institution. Iso-Pavilion, being mobile and affordable, makes this solution practical.

We've been able to mobilized Sunlight's talent to tailor Iso-Pavilion's design and we can scale this solution in a way for India and the rest of the world based on the prior work we did addressing housing needs.

We see MIT SOLVE’s Elevate program providing us with mentor, partner, financial means, and an important platform needed to push this project forward.

Sunlight currently seeks:

• Mentors for our business development to scale our business model in Asia, Europe, and Americas
• Partnerships with material manufacturers Tata Steel, Covestro, and others who may play an important role sourcing base materials for Iso-Pavilion.
• Funding for production expansion.
• A platform to discuss, champion, challenge, and promote opportunities to face the global threats to healthcare and housing infrastructure crisis.

In India Sunlight has had ongoing discussion with TataSteel, BASF, and Covestro (formerly Bayer) for Partnerships in material supply. Many of our preliminary meetings with Sr. members were enthusiastic and looked promising. Each company, for reasons unknown, have failed enter any significant partnership discussion. We have discussed Sponsorships, material supply lines, and re-deploy their existing manufacturing to produce Iso-Pavilion assemblies (for example TataSteel Puff-panel plants to re-tool for our roof and wall panels) to make win-win opportunities. 

We are looking for more interested partners, guidance for negotiating partnerships, and greater understanding about the business opportunities.