The nonprofit Sunflower Network (New York) has been delivering medical supplies to Ukraine since shortly after the country was invaded by Russia in February 2022. “We built up a logistics network throughout Europe and Ukraine and delivered more than $4.5 million of aid directly to Ukrainians in need,” says Founder Dustin Ross.
As the war continued, the organization decided to shift its focus to delivering infrastructure to create a more sustainable, enduring impact, Ross adds, eventually partnering with architecture and design firms CannonDesign (Brooklyn, N.Y.) and Pelli Clarke & Partners (New York) to discuss opportunities to build a hospital in the country.
The team identified Brody, Ukraine, as a viable location for a new healthcare facility. The city is one of the nonprofit’s key access points for delivering medical supplies and has seen pediatric patient volumes increase by more than 100 percent in the three years since the outbreak of the war.
Brody is about 50 miles from the border with Poland and away from the frontlines of the war. The city has an existing medical campus, spread out over a dozen buildings at three sites, but many of those facilities have not been significantly updated in a century. The greatest need expressed by the locals was for a children’s hospital, as the existing pediatric care facility is housed on the third floor of a dilapidated, Soviet-era building that does not have an elevator, forcing patients to be carried up and down stairs on stretchers in many cases. Pediatric patient volumes in Brody have also increased by more than 100 percent in the three years since the outbreak of the war.
Recognizing that building a healthcare facility in a country at war would present challenges, including labor and materials shortages, the project team turned to modular construction, with building units to be fabricated off-site in Poland and transported over the border by truck. Fundraising for the multiphase project began in May 2024 and is still ongoing.
In the meantime, the modules are already being built, with a goal of starting on-site construction this summer and opening the children’s hospital by the end of the year, says Fred Clarke, founder and partner emeritus at Pelli Clarke & Partners.
The first phase will comprise a 15-module facility for seven private patient rooms, an isolation room, observation room, pharmacy, and other essential services. The second phase will add another seven modules and seven patient rooms.
To ensure future flexibility, the roughly 515-square-foot modules will feature steel crossbeams every 13 feet that can be punched through to create corridors and combine modules. The structure will also be , as well as outfitted with ducts, plumbing and mechanical equipment to be a “plug-in system” that is completely self-contained, Clarke says.
“We’re thinking really long-term, about how to put effort and sweat and love into something that is not just going to be immediately impactful, but really have the opportunity to grow and evolve over time and be really transformative,” says Emma Bernstein, chief development officer at Sunflower Network.
Robert McCune is senior editor of Healthcare Design and can be reached at [email protected].
