Olivia Bloch

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities across the world have been forced to adapt temporary hospitals out of an uncoordinated mix of spaces such as parks, stadiums, ships, army bases, galleries and car parks. This resulting disorganisation questionshow we handle sudden states of disaster and suggests the need to future-proof our urban fabric through a management system that transcends politicisation and human error in governance. My investigation re-imagines how we approach disasters presenting a conceptual shift which repositions infrastructure as a neutral constant in situations of political and social turmoil. Infrastructure as a pre-existing physical artefact is embedded into the urban fabric where it becomes a depoliticised and pre-understood process that can be activated when necessary, capable of responding to multiple disasters across multiple timescales, and on different levels of permanence and temporality.