Airflows, Architecture, and Airborne Infections: Can Better Buildings Beat the Next Pandemic?

Recap

In September, we had the privilege of hosting two esteemed speakers who delivered an insightful presentation titled 'Airflow, Architecture, and Airborne Infection: Can Superior Building Design Mitigate the Impact of Future Pandemics?'. Our first speaker was Prof. Eric Schuldenfrei, an Associate Professor of the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Project Coordinator for the 'Spatial Exposure Notification' initiative funded by the Collaborative Research Fund. He recently completed two terms as the Head of the Department of Architecture. The second speaker, Professor Marc Downie, is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago. Prof. Downie is a pioneer in the realm of new media art. His innovative contributions extend to the development of interactive music, machine learning, and computer graphics. Collectively, Professors Schuldenfrei and Downie presented a compelling argument for how their research could potentially aid in the development of effective strategies to combat emerging diseases.

The event was a resounding success, marked by a significant turnout. It fostered interdisciplinary exchanges, with participants from diverse fields actively engaging in dialogue and sharing their professional experiences. The abstract and photographs from the event are displayed below.

Abstract

The devastating cholera pandemics of the 19th century were first analyzed by epidemiologists who identified the water-borne pathogen and its spread, and then solved by an unprecedented and interdisciplinary effort to invent and deploy new water infrastructures for cities. How might city design change as a result of our early 21st century pandemic?

Having developed a new class of low-cost sensors, our team is reconstructing key spatial and temporal dimensions of contagion and human behavior. Operating within buildings via light bulbs, our sensors can collect data previously unavailable to epidemiology and architecture, potentially measuring interactions between environment, proximity, time, location, airflow and design at city scale.

In experimenting with these sensors we can begin to sketch the future: can such a data collection infrastructure ground exposure risk estimates, refine transmission models or help develop efficient responses to emerging diseases? How might we couple building configuration and a new infrastructure of pathogen surveillance? Does this new, real-time view of disease lead to a revolution in building codes, urban environments, and policy? And finally, what will the infrastructural response to 21st century pathogenic threats be?

Speakers

Professor Eric Schuldenfrei

Associate Professor

Department of Architecture

The University of Hong Kong

Professor Marc Downie

Associate Professor

Department of Cinema and Media StudiesThe University of Chicago

Eric Schuldenfrei is the Project Coordinator of the “Spatial Exposure Notification” Collaborative Research Fund grant. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge and has taught at Princeton, Columbia, and HKU, where he recently completed two terms as the Head of the Department of Architecture. Schuldenfrei founded ESKYIU, a multi-disciplinary architecture studio integrating culture, community, and technology. He has presented his work at DLD on the topic of Future Cities, Harvard University AsiaGSD series, and the Royal College of Art in London.

Marc Downie is a pioneering new media artist, arriving via condensed-matter physics (at University of Cambridge) and agent-based AI (at MIT's Media Lab). His interactive installations, compositions, and projections have presented advances in the fields of interactive music, machine learning, and computer graphics. His ongoing international collaborations extend computation to new situations, including alternate reality games, mixed reality dance and carbon negative housing. Always in collaboration and always crossing disciplinary boundaries, his work enters and exits fields without permission from, and without deference to, established disciplinary structures. Downie is an Associate Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago.

Website: https://www.usi.hku.hk/clusters/health-and-cities

For enquiries, please contact Al Hanyok at ahanyok@hku.hk