Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, an international task force of designers, engineers, medical professionals, and military experts have joined forces to work on CURA, an open-source project aimed at capacity building in Intensive-Care Units (ICU). The first prototype of CURA, whose name stands for Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments, uses repurposed shipping containers to create plug-in biocontainment pods that can be quickly deployed in cities around the world, promptly responding to the shortage of ICU space in hospitals and the spread of the disease.