Office phone booth manufacturer ROOM introduces Test Booth, providing protection for healthcare workers on the front lines
NYC startup recycles resources to create modular test booths for COVID-19 donations
ROOM, a designer and manufacturer of privacy-centric, modular office solutions, today announces the Test Booth – the brand’s signature phone booth reimagined to facilitate rapid testing and protect healthcare workers on the front lines worldwide. ROOM will donate the first production round of its Test Booths to hospitals in hotspots around the world, providing extra support for medics who face the ongoing challenge of insufficient personal protective equipment (PPE). ROOM is looking to donate to NHS hospitals in the UK and will further open-source the booth’s design files, enabling others to manufacture locally.
Inspired by a concept developed by medical researchers in South Korea who have been at the forefront of inventing solutions to combat the spread of COVID-19, and further expanded upon by Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, ROOM’s Test Booth is designed to minimise contact between medical professionals and infected patients. The booths are constructed from three panes of plexiglass, upcycled doors from ROOM’s core product—the soundproof phone booth—providing a shield for frontline workers from the most direct form of exposure. The booth’s plexiglass walls are easy to disinfect after each use, and each Test Booth is equipped with medical-grade gloves and a shelf for disinfectants and other essential testing equipment.
Test Booths ship flat-packed and can be assembled onsite in thirty minutes or less. Booths are flexible and easy to move, and can be used both indoors or outdoors, ensuring quick and seamless implementation in hospitals and temporary outdoor testing sites. The Test Booths can be used as singular units, or can be stacked side-by-side to form protective walls between patients and healthcare workers during testing.
ROOM will manufacture and donate the Test Booths to hospitals and healthcare facilities around the world, including those in the UK, with its first installment of booths being shipped later this week. Initial recipients include hospitals around the US and Mexico, including Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, Boston Medical, University of Washington Medicine, Hospital Infantil de Mexico, ISSSTE Mexico City, among others. ROOM has launched a website, room.com/COVID-19, where medical institutions can request a Test Booth for their facility. Design files for the Test Booth are freely available for download, enabling others to manufacture the test booths locally and distribute as many as possible, as quickly as possible, to facilities in need around the world.
“As a business creating modular architecture for the office, now is an unusual time for us. No one is actually using their offices at the moment, so we’ve had time to think about how best to apply our collective design skills and manufacturing resources to make a contribution to the fight against COVID-19. By providing test booths to hospitals, we can minimise direct contact between patients and frontline medical workers, who often don’t have access to the PPE they need and, as such, are at high risk of infection,” says ROOM Co-Founder Morten Meisner-Jensen.
“We have used our creative skills to design a product out of recycled parts from our existing phone booth, while ensuring a simple and functional design that is both easily accessible and replicable. It was important that local makers and organisations have access to our design files in order to manufacture booths themselves. It’s going to take collective effort to beat the pandemic, and our hope is that with these booths we can play our part in protecting our healthcare heroes on the front lines.”
ROOM was founded in New York in May 2018 with the goal of helping companies of all sizes create a better work environment. The brand launched operations in Europe in November 2019 and now ships to France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Switzerland and Ireland. ROOM’s suite of products are currently used by over 3,000 companies around the world including Google, Amazon, Humana, Salesforce, Lyft, Oscar Health, and more.
To request a Test Booth or download the design files visit room.com/COVID-19
ROOM is reinventing the modern workplace to create the offices of the future around the world. Transitioning from a stagnant floor plan to one that is adaptive, ROOM offers modular and creative architectural office solutions that foster team collaboration, individual work, and everything in between. ROOM helps companies of all sizes create a better work environment.
Launched in May 2018 by serial entrepreneurs Morten Meisner-Jensen and Brian Chen, ROOM is backed by Slow Ventures, and notable angel investors from Silicon Valley. Recognised by Fast Company in its 2019 Innovation by Design awards and named one of the Best Inventions of 2018 by TIME Magazine, ROOM is already building the workplace of tomorrow for over 3,000 clients ranging from budding startups to Fortune 500 companies, including Nike, J.P. Morgan, Google, and Salesforce.
To learn more about ROOM, visit www.room.com
