In the winter of 2020, the Apulia regional administration had to build a hospital from the ground up, to be used as a Covid ward in order to increase, in a very short time, the number of intensive and sub-intensive care unit beds. Cobar has been awarded the contract and, with the involvement of about 40 companies, in a mere 45 days it has completed construction of a pavilion in the Fiera del Levante in Bari, equipped with 152 hospital beds. Covering a total area of 15,000 sqm, the structure houses, along with the beds, two operating rooms, a CT scan lab, a radiology ward and a laboratory for analysis.

The distinguishing feature of this achievement is in the speed of completion. Repurposing a pavilion of an exhibition complex into a hospital required careful studies on the road network, internal routes and materials used, in order to minimize the possibility spreading the virus. We intervened on the hospital access ways, starting with the road signs at strategic points of the urban and suburban road system. Ambulance and medical staff entrances, parking areas and loading and unloading areas have been outlined and aptly located. Plans included a “hot room” in Pavilion 13 for patient hospitalization, consisting of a prefabricated structure covered in PVC panels, connected to the triage area and a diagnostic area equipped with a CT scan room and an X-ray room with portable X-ray equipment.

This structure also marks the start of connections to other pavilions housing the intensive care units. Pavilions 9, 11 and 18 are used as intensive care rooms, divided into blocks of 16 beds each. The blocks are accessible by one protected corridor each, fitted with a filter zone at the entrance and exit, and dressing rooms for staff, doctors and nurses, break rooms for medical professionals and technicians, changing rooms, toilets for staff, ventilator storage units, a storage room for medicine refrigeration units and additional storage rooms used for potentially contaminated or hazardous material.

The internal space distribution has been achieved with the use of entirely recyclable plasterboard walls: even during a healthcare emergency, the care for the environment was never out of sight. The plasterboard walls were covered with PVC panels up to a height of 1 m, to facilitate room sanitation. A different solution has been adopted in the intensive care areas, where the walls are made of galvanized steel sheets covered with an extremely thin anti-bacterial silver-ion based PVC film.

Also in the intensive care areas, each bed has been fitted with a header beam for the passage of pipes for the administration of medical gases, network cables and electrical distribution. PVC flooring, painted in different colours according to the areas to which it is applied, distinguishes the paths inside the pavilions. Subsequently, other pavilions were used as dialysis centres, management centres, front offices and vaccination hubs.  Existing roofs that were in a condition of neglect were also restored.