Between Bodies

Between Bodies is a facility for bioprosthetic heart valve production and transplantation, investigating how architecture can choreograph the movement and transformation of biological material.
Combining an abattoir, porcine valve harvesting facility and transplant operating theatre within a singular architecture framework, the project reveals relationships typically concealed within contemporary medical environments. Rather than treating slaughter and surgery as opposing conditions, it explores them as interconnected stages within a larger system of biological transference.
Organised as a sequence of increasingly controlled environments, the building is structured by the intersecting movement of pigs and patients, butchers and surgeons, and clean air and contaminated waste. Pressure gradients, sterile boundaries, waste management systems and patterns of occupation act as architectural tools that structure these flows.
Rather than functioning as a neutral container of technical processes, the building becomes an active participant in biological exchange, revealing moments of transition and exposing the connections between care, production, and repair.

Final Model Close-up: the Surgical Suite
Close-up of the final building model, highlighting the operating theatre and scrub room in section. Ventilation and drainage systems are integrated above and below occupied spaces, while the building’s organic, fleshy language informs windows, fume hoods, and medical equipment.

Model Process Iterations
Hand-sculpted iterations of building nodules at 1:50 scale. Each nodule corresponds to a programmatic element, sliced into section to examine the organic language of form exteriors and the relationship between rooms formed by folds and crevices.

Third Floor Plan
Hand-drawn and painted A2 plan of the surgical suite. The operating theatre sits adjacent to the valve transfer hatch and equipment room, connecting via the scrub room to the surgeons’ changing facilities and via dirty corridors to the utility and the building’s primary circulation.

Short Section
Hand-drawn and painted A2 section depicting the abattoir, valve harvesting facility, and operating theatre. Chutes transport biological material and waste, while a network of clean and dirty corridors choreographs circulation between key spaces.

Final Building Model
1:50 sectional model of the operating theatre, examination room & doctors’ lounge, and valve harvesting facility. Corridors and cores connect nodules suspended across levels, with the top floor hung from the overall suspension system to the primary steel frame with butchery inspired hooks.