POST VACCINE : What Do we Do with the Gateways and Distancing?

December 20, 2020

POST VACCINE : What Do we Do with the Gateways and Distancing?

The entire world is looking positive that the vaccine will lead the world to get back to their old habits.

All these discussion about a new normal may not achieve eventuality but the research to anticipate another epidemic has been helpful.

The World Health Organization identified the following priority disease:

COVID-19
Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever
Ebola virus disease and Marburg virus disease
Lassa fever
Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)
Nipah and henipaviral diseases
Rift Valley fever
Zika
“Disease X”

Stating that:

Disease X represents the knowledge that a serious international epidemic could be caused by a pathogen currently unknown to cause human disease. The R&D Blueprint explicitly seeks to enable early cross-cutting R&D preparedness that is also relevant for an unknown “Disease X”

The effect of the vaccines is suppose to last 16 years but the government here in Singapore will still do contact tracing nevertheless. Singapore is still vigilant and anticipating for future Disease X thereby making preparations.

During this time in Singapore, the government state will be issuing physical token to track visitors of places to notify them of possible infection. TRACE TOGETHER token comes in various sizes and shape probably because multiple vendors are making them or maybe different region of Singapore will call their own tender:

they are to be scanned with QR code and Bluetooth. A Gateway is require to scan this:

We then find different communities having different tokens like the migrant workers having different type for job sites:

Bluepass and Bluegate for site specific access

All these money spent of tracking people for the prevent of spread requires GATEWAYS into all buildings. Years of architecture proposal to have an open, free and easy passage to alleviate the notion that architecture is for the people now suddenly becomes the notion of gateways. In architecture gateways are meant to communicate entering into a different realms of space such as entering a town, or change spatial program like walking between a public and commercial space.

The usage of the flat type of blue tooth beacon requires you to consciously tap at gateway receptors, while the higher powered ones scans you involuntarily.

This means we can have visible gateways and invisible gateways.

It makes sense that architects need to demarcate invisible gateway architecturally.

if we understood a western medieval castle, the gateway involves a draw bridge over a moat .

You would reach a gate called portcullis where you enter into a foyer and one more gate. The fortified cylindrical elements are vertical access component that allow soldiers to shoot arrows through a vertical slit in the wall. These gateway elements is collectively called a Barbican.

Chinese castles too have similar concepts

Of course the common gateway we normal encounter in an urban environment is none other than your train station ticket gateway.

They all basically validate your pass to enter to their facilities. In the case of pandemics the function is to trace the people infected so the purpose of the gateway is use differently from the original use of gateway.

The Trace Together token also was used for the identification of offenders involving a brawl in the city. That became a tool for crime fighting. While Singaporeans lack privacy and human rights awareness, they were somewhat indifferent to how the token was used.

Perhap Post Vaccine tracing is more like sensor based sorting or batching like sorting of assorted materials in a factory.

or perhaps luggage management that you find in airport (baggage handling system)

where each baggage is tagged and and as each baggage moves , the tags are constantly scanned at multiple gateways along the material handing paths to track where each bag is located in the system. In the case of the Pandemic, the urban paths are where the visible and invisible gateways will be.

Baggage handling system however still does not address distancing.

If we are still tracing the infections based on cross path and location, then distancing is still required.

Singapore's Trace Together also logs your proximity to all individuals that were in 2m radius in your daily live. Many infectious people identified had their token unveiling people around them for more than 10mins to put these people in proximity in Quarantine.

If you read the Torah, one of the earliest instruction of structures that require human distancing was the Tabernacle. A worship place consisting of a Mishkan Tent that housed the ARK OF COVENANT (a golden box that keeps the 10 commandments and other things) which requires specific distance away from the common people thereby having a boundary to exclude people from the Mishkan Tent.

The tabernacle was also distanced from the the dwelling unit of the campsite

However, campers to campers were not distanced. Some scientist have speculated that the ARK OF COVENANT was radioactive in nature thereby required a distances from the campers. In this case the radioactive qualities could affect the human.