Frame and Form

Unfortunately once again a humanitarian catastrophe has created thousands of refugees. For decades, designers have thought and re-designed a solution to provide emergency shelter to those affected by natural disaster, war or socio-economic imbalances. The solutions vary widely, from prefabricated structures and shipping containers to simple sheets of polyurethane. But in reality, as noted The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in its guidelines on emergency materials, these proposals have not worked effectively in its work to protect and give temporary shelter to thousands of thousands of displaced, An effective solution is yet to be designed.

The properties for a good solution for emergency shelter could be:

Resistance to inclement weather (rain, low / high temperatures, winds)

Comfort (health, social and emotional)

Economy production (either with local materials by industrial production)

Facility transport and assembly (disaster areas are often difficult to access and mounting media are usually very low, without electricity, practicable road machinery or)

With such complicated constraints to meet many of the proposed solutions are characterized by a very careful structural technical component that eliminates all superficial. Here we propose a structural analysis / functional of the most interesting and creative that can become part of the solution to this important design problem.

· LIGHTWEIGHT EMERGENCY TENT

UNHCR official solution (2002) – Design: Ghassem Fardanesh – Cost: 100$ – Capacity: 4-5 people – Weight: 41.5 kg

This solution is today used in disasters such as Haiti. This is typical of textile tent waterproof polyurethane. Light, cheap, insulation and efficient in many respects, possibly the best worst solution. In reality, this new version of the shops replacing obsolete heavy military canvas tents and short-lived to be used to supply, but comes with certain days of delay compared to the disaster being replaced in the early days with the airlift of 'sheets’ plastic and first aid. We all know its structure in flexible plastic rods arched stabilized fixed tensor field.

The following examples have been used in humanitarian missions and could provide the basis for the design of a future alternative.

· Tensegrity SHELTERS

Designed to house more than bunk, these alternatives provide solutions for tensegrity domes hospitals, schools, stores, etc. With the support of design Buckminster Fuller Institute these structures provide ultralight buildings with space for communal facilities.

Solution Pacific Domes – Design: Buckminster Fuller Institute – Size hemisphere 5 13m in diameter – Mount Weather 2 a 7 h - Weight: 91 A650 kg

Solution World Shelter (1983) - Design: Steven Elias, Bruce LeBel, Buckminster Fuller Institute - Cost: 365$ - Capacity: 6-8 people - Weight: 30 kg

· GRIPCLIPS

Solution Shelter Systems (1975) – Design: Robert Gillis – Cost: 10$ for a set of 4 clips

One of the most common situations that are the humanitarian agencies is that they arrive on the affected community enough shops already made their own shelter structures. The problem is that these shelters often do not meet the above mentioned properties and the problem continues. The solution shown here is intended to facilitate the key to building a light roof structure What if the first aid kit UNHCR not only do get plastic sheeting but also clips connectors and instructions on how to create a structure for your shelter?

This clip allows textile unite with bamboo sticks or plastic tubes without puncturing the waterproof sheet. In disaster areas, often, what is left is rubble material where you can find the elements necessary to build a relatively efficient with a little help implemented ‘Know How’ (know-how). It may be preferable to send some clips that knowledge and entire stores that do not work and come home late.

· PAPER HOUSES

Solving Global Village (1995) – Design: Ferrara Design – Cost: 400$- Capacity: 4-5 people – Weight: 77.3 kg

This solution provides a transitional shelter reconstruction time. It is fully collapsible and easily assembled. Its sturdy structure is based on polopropileno corrugated plates artfully assembled so that all the walls and cover the whole stiffened just each other to get a house type origami Small but tough. The purpose of this proposal is to provide a temporary housing unit pre-primary where a family can live while rebuilding their old house. The materials are specifically designed to NOT take more than 12 months. One of the problems too durable shelter is the development of apathy and conformity behaviors where official aid becomes the only hope, rarefying classical problems of poverty and depression.

· CONCRETE CANVAS

Solution CC (2004) – Design: Peter Brewin, William Crawford – Cost: 2000$- Capacity: 5 people – Weight: 230 kg

Transportation, inflates, hydrates and 12h after you have a shelter ready for use. This proposal uses the ingenious Concrete Canvas material invented by two students of military-industrial design for final project developed this system where a cement impregnated fabric can be molded after hydrated hardened and capable of withstanding. The key to this design is the double layer of fabric, a layer of waterproof plastic tissue internal and external impregnated cement. Inflating the balloon got a particular way intrinsically in tension, allowing us to optimum shape for the future vaulted concrete structure. This bold design achieves a thickness of the deck between 4 and 13 millimeters where you can practice openings for doors and windows. The design has serious drawbacks such as excessive weight, price and the large water consumption (500L) while it could become too durable, a drawback in temporary settlements in host countries.

· SUPER ADOBE

Cal-Earth Solution (1995) – Design: Nader Khalili, UNHCR supervision – Cost: 625$- Capacity: 1 family

Finally this solution proposes the construction of your own self transitional housing with limited resources. The Super Adobe is a construction technique based on geometries vaulted materialized through rows of local soil-filled sacks stacked and reinforced with barbed wire between rows. This design requires only plastic bags and Instructions to work at the site of the disaster. With basic tools, land and labor-intensive shelters are available with a very acceptable quality. Several aims to improve the basic solution: can stabilize the soil with mud or a piece of cement or lime; barbed wire ensures lateral stability and avoiding sacks sliding collapses; careful geometry ensures the stability of these structures in dome and finally, an insulating coating ensures waterproofing adobe. The big advantages of this design are, one hand, that allows any group of unskilled people to build a house until they can buy a more definitive, and another, its low environmental impact by consuming only bags raffia, earth and barbed wire.

No design of shelter will become a solution to natural disasters, that as Cameron Sinclair says ‘Earthquakes do not kill people, buildings if!‘ Perhaps the ultimate solution passing through a good structural design, economic, social and environmental performance of our buildings.

This compendium of structural solutions for refugees has been carried out thanks to a book indispensable in the field of architecture in crisis ‘Design Like You Give a Damn‘ (designed as if it mattered) published by the organization Architecture for Humanity.