Designers have created a kit that turns currently unused school buses into mobile labs, in a proposal to bring COVID-19 tests to low-income communities and areas without proper access to test centers.
“Our starting point in this was how can we bring [testing] to the community as opposed to making them go to it?” says Mariana Giraldo, a planning and strategy specialist at the U.S. design company Perkins and Will, which worked on the mobile lab design.
The designers are now talking with potential partners to launch the retrofitted buses, that include generators or solar powers for power – and they’re sharing the design for free.
“It really is all about creating a solution, not owning it,” says Rob Goodwin, principal and design director at Perkins and Will. “So we put this out in the public domain already, because we just want it to happen.”
