This 20 year old JMI student's quarantine shelter design has won several national & international accolades

An idea can strike anyone, anytime, anywhere, right? Then, what is it that separates others from those who innovate something for the welfare of mankind? Well, the key lies in the timely realization and thorough implementation of that idea by putting in continuous efforts until and unless you achieve the desired result.

Kaif Ali, a fourth-year student of Architecture from Jamia Millia Islamia University New Delhi, got his brain working last summer to come up with a solution to solve the problem of providing fast-built, durable, safe, secure, hygienic, and on-the-go Quarantine Shelters to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

True that necessity necessitates innovation. If you have the eye to identify the core issues affecting each one of us, you’ll immediately get the urge to do something that can ease people's pain. It is undoubtedly the passion to solve problems that ignites the fire within you to work harder.

Meet Kaif Ali!

A young innovator and entrepreneur, Kaif Ali is a global award-winning student of architecture in his early twenties. He is the founder of "SPACE ERA: A standard 'SPACE' for the pandemic 'ERA' and beyond".

Passionate about Sustainable Development Goals, he has researched its objectives and has worked on them as well. Recently, while going through the Coronavirus pandemic-related problems that the whole world is continuously grappling with, an idea to build habitable climate-responsive Covid-19 shelters struck his mind.

He did extensive research and fostered an undertaking named SpaceEra which serves as a multi-purpose, portable, and easily dismantlable Covid-isolation shelter. These shelters made up of corrugated metal sheet containers can also act as refugee shelters or flood-relief centres.

The project received huge rounds of applause and appreciation from all over the world. Adding to his list of achievements, Kaif Ali got honoured as Covid-19 Lockdown Hero of India.

What is the highly acclaimed project SpaceEra all about?

As per Ali, it has apparently become a necessity to incorporate certain headways in every field that upholds a country's clinical framework. By introducing certain architectural remodeling measures, we can limit the global havoc created by the novel coronavirus.

Initiated last year in March, SpaceEra is a similar initiative towards revolutionizing the concept of quarantine centers and medical care units through architectural innovation.

The core concept behind undertaking this project was to implement appropriate social distancing measures and maintain other healthcare precautions along with providing a safe home away from the patient's home.

What groups did Kaif target to come up with the SpaceEra Project?

Target Groups	Reasoning
Healthcare Workers	Medical staff and other healthcare workers have to continuously share the same space with patients that can make them become more vulnerable to getting infected with the dreaded virus.
Migrant Workers	In these uncertain times, covid related restrictions and lockdown measures are being implemented from time to time. Hence, migrant workers traveling to and fro from their villages to metropolitan areas must quarantine themselves for a certain period to avoid getting and spreading the infection to others.
Suspects who are home-quarantining	If proper precautions aren’t taken, they can spread the infection to other family members and thus can become super-spreaders.
Suspects who are quarantining at hospitals	They have a high probability of getting infected by other patients or infecting other patients if carrying the viral load.

What are the design and construction aspects of these proposed shelters?

The material that can be used to build the shelters, as proposed in the prototype, is corrugated sheet containers: PPGI Sheets (Pre-painted Galvanized Iron), Polyurethane Foam (used as sandwich material).

A container of dimension (6 m×2.5 m) can be employed in open areas like parking spaces and parks near Covid-19 hotspots to develop a three-bed quarantine centre or a two-bed isolation ward for seriously hospitalized patients.

Standard construction of a four shelter unit with eight such cuboidal containers stacked atop can give rise to thirty-two quarantine units, which gives a total of ninety-six beds.

What's more? A single such container has enough space for making four compartmentalized and segregated washrooms or setting up a portable medical testing and supply unit. This open-source design CURA makes use of repurposed shipping container sheets to quickly assemble ICUs wherever required.

How resourceful these shelters are proposed to be?

These portable shelters come with an array of advantages like keeping the provision of separate open areas and green spaces for each unit, breaking the transmission of the virus within the quarantine facility whilst not compromising with dilution ventilation, and maintaining a three-tier social distancing norm safety within the premises.

Well, the good parts don't end here. This budget-friendly shelter comes with other USPs such as:

Requirement of less manpower and can be assembled easily
Lightweight yet tough and durable
Can be sanitized easily and is recyclable
Is time and cost-efficient
Is a scalable structure and can be expanded as per the requirements
Can cater to multi-purpose usages such as a healthcare unit and testing units. Can also be deployed post-Covid-19 to construct refugee camps, army base camps, or flood-relief camps.

Awards, Appreciation, and Accolades bagged by the SpaceEra Project

Kaif Ali is indeed a great source of inspiration for the youth all across the globe. He is currently a member and representative from India at Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network (CYCN).
An extremely talented persona, he is recognized as a Global Youth Icon and is presently a member at Youth Leadership Network, Zagreb, Croatia.
His vision behind the SpaceEra project has been appreciated by the MHRD, Government of India, and he was honored as the Covid-19 Lockdown Hero of India.
The project also got featured in the Times of India newspaper and was invited to the Yukti Panel 2.0, which has been created to encourage technological innovations and Startups from Higher Educational Institutions.
He has also won the International Creativity Competition organized by Telecom University, Indonesia. On top of it, the project has even bagged the position of the "Best Design Category" from Prep Lab, California, USA.
To add to his never-ending list of remarkable achievements, Kaif also won the D'source Corona Design Challenge, organized by IIT Bombay last year, and has achieved the first position in Ethos India Competition.

Isn't it truly inspiring and amazing to the core? Feeling motivated yet?

Well, to pump you up a bit more, SpaceEra's vision is recognized by UNHCR, UN Youth Envoy, One young world, and numerous other international associations. Currently, Kaif is working with Organisations of Africa, in Nigeria, to build the world's premier and largest medical center made entirely out of shipping containers, sourced from the same concept as his project SpaceEra.

Well, that's not all. Kaif has given a beautiful message for the younger generation of India, bubbling with energy and exploring ways to fruitfully channelize it!

"We all have imagined something in our respective fields for the betterment of our society. We only have to initiate as we all have the potential to inspire the upcoming generation."

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