During the COVID-19 pandemic, the enterprise’s 1960s Airstream trailer served as a critical central command center for healthcare professionals in the field, enabling some 15,000 people to receive COVID testing. When stewardship of the Airstream shifted to the enterprise Office of Community Health and Impact in the summer of 2024, it created an opportunity to reinvent and redesign it in a way that helps Jefferson meet people where they’re at.
With an innovative team from across the enterprise guiding its future, the latest spark for those efforts came in the form of a spring special topics course. In the class, students from various disciplines worked together to ideate renovations for the Airstream, present them to leadership, and then support its physical reinvention into the future.
In this episode of the Thomas Jefferson University News Podcast, we hear from architecture, interior design, textile design and construction management students involved in that design proposal process, the faculty members who guided their efforts, and members of the enterprise leadership team who were beyond impressed with the results.
Podcast: There’s That Jefferson Airstream Again!
A look inside the University’s transdisciplinary effort to reimagine and redesign the enterprise’s glimmering, silver trailer.
Students in the transdisciplinary Airstream special topics course look inside the eye-catching vehicle on Ravenhill Campus.