Elegance in the Complexity | United Therapeutics

0:00

[ the problem ]

DPF Facility for United Therapeutics: Elegance in the Complexity

This video was produced to showcase the construction of United Therapeutics’ cutting-edge Designated Pathogen-Free (DPF) Facility. This building is particularly significant because it is the world’s first clinical-scale Designated Pathogen-Free Facility (DPF). The 77,000-square-foot, highly secure complex breeds gene-edited pigs used for clinical-grade xenotransplantation (Xeno Program). The facility was built to help address the global organ transplant crisis, where hundreds of thousands of people die each year while waiting for a life-saving transplant. It supports United Therapeutics’ goal of creating an unlimited supply of tolerable, transplantable organs to address the severe shortage of human donor organs.

Ground broke on the facility on June 20, 2022, and it became fully operational at the end of March 2024. We filmed in the time in-between. We came in after enough of the structure had taken shape for its vision to emerge, but before the building was fully operational. This gave us unique access to explore its inner structure, revealing the framework and engineering that would soon be inaccessible behind finished surfaces and fully functioning operations. We sought to give visual form to the building's architectural vision: elegance born from complexity, expressed and seen as simplicity.

The building is a highly sophisticated clean-room pig farm, with one of the most advanced air handling, water purification, and electrical systems, all integrated with operating rooms that exceed normal operating room standards. We bring viewers inside the facility to experience its remarkable complexity firsthand, exploring the intricate design, advanced engineering, and powerful mechanical systems that sustain and support the building's ambitions.

‍

[ our solution ]

In bringing this video to life, we understood that taking viewers inside the facility meant more than simply showing them what lies behind the doors of the DPF. It also meant revealing the broader story of its construction and the people who made it possible. To provide that context, we captured drone footage of the site and its surrounding landscape, situating the facility within its physical environment. We filmed employees moving throughout the building and on the property around it to convey both its immense scale and the human involvement at its core. Finally, we conducted interviews with the project's key leaders, whose insights underscore the ingenuity, precision, and care that shaped every aspect of the facility's design and construction. For example, we interviewed Aaron Ortiz (Director of Xeno Manufacturing Operations at United Therapeutics) who explains how the facility was designed so that any equipment requiring maintenance can be accessed without entering the protected barrier housing the pigs, safeguarding the organs themselves. This detail can’t fully be captured in architectural shots alone; hearing about it from Aaron makes it all the more impactful because he helped engineer this.

What viewers see in our video is the culmination of two and a half years of effort from a tremendous number of people to bring a building, a vision, and a new reality to life. It is more than just a building that has been built.

‍