Small Steps, Big Impact – AMD-SHIELD


Mitalee Parikh is an energetic architect, currently pursuing her Masters at IAAC Spain, who has found herself back home in Ahmedabad, in the middle of her semester owing to the pandemic. This interruption did not deter her from pursuing her interest in “how we make things, and making meaningful things”. In fact, the current circumstances have accelerated her study on the future of manufacturing – evaluating mass production, fully automated process against a more distributed system of design and manufacturing.
She has been studying design in emergent futures – where design taken on a more widespread view rather than being restricted to specialized silos or branches of design like product, graphics, architecture etc. The whole pedagogy prepares them to speculate possible futures, identifying problems that may arise tomorrow - so they could intervene today, thereby changing the course of the future. This is where she finds herself, actively engaging amid her immediate context – providing the most essential commodity – face shields for protection against spatter.

  

The AMD-SHIELD is a reusable face-protection shield developed for the police, healthcare professionals and other unsung heroes who are most vulnerable to Covid-19 infections. 

 

Speaking about the distributed design and manufacturing bit, Mitalee explains that with the Maker’s movement gaining prominence world over, the design profession is moving away from the “star designer” attitude to working with collective intelligence in putting things together – building on each other’s work.
She adopted an open source design for the shield and tried to execute it here with local resources. Initially it was a little challenging, finding the right materials, as the country was in its first week of lockdown – but with proper permissions in place, and some bit of legwork for logistics, she was able to put together local vendors and manufacturers. She had to adapt the design to suit her local resources, and this adapted version she put back online as an open source so that someone else in a similar context like hers could skip that step and directly begin production – that, is the beauty of open source, and this gives a glimmer of hope for a more collaborative optimistic future.

 

She set out to achieve an ambitious target of 10000 face shields! The first batch, she assembled by herself at home, and from the next, she got a group of volunteers who would assemble many more shields for her from their homes. 
She launched a crowd sourcing platform to raise money for the face shields, along with a colleague Jaydeep Biniwale, and soon achieved the target contribution they had aimed for.
Hence, by involving local players, vendors, manufacturers, volunteers and contributors – Mitalee was able to generate a large level of community participation for her project. Many people stepped up enthusiastically, since it was a project for public good, and they could see the value they were able to create.

The role of designer, she muses, is no longer someone who just puts their name on the product – the role is to bring together a community of participants – to coordinate, to communicate and to collaborate. We as designers must offer whatever value we can, through our skills – even if it is tiny, as long as it fits into the bigger picture.

   

You can contribute to this endeavor by visiting https://amdshield.org/

Features
·        Full Face Protection
·        Washable & Reusable
·        Simple & Comfortable Design
·        Adjustable for different head sizes
Technical Specs
Dimensions :17 x 17 x 22 cm
Weight: 45 grams
Materials: Acrylic and Cellulose Acetate
Fabrication Techniques: Lasercutting and some hand assembly
Usage: Over masks
Wash with: Sanitizer / Soap and Water
Replacable parts: Visor
Cost Per Unit: ₹75 / shield


The design is developed from various open-source shields like the Happy Shield, the M-19, the Rapid Response shields by Georgia Tech and the COVID19 DIY masks by Trotec Canada.


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