UNHRC’s Lightweight Emergency Tent
Currently the UNHRC provides a “…rigid-style or typical center-pole double-fly tent made of canvas.” Due to the materials used the tents are prone to rot and cannot be kept in mass storage for any length of time. Many attempts to re-invent the tent have popped up over the years but most are cost prohibitive, or do not comply with the UNHRC’s guide to emergency materials . Recently a new addition has been added to the arsenal of relief efforts, called the Lightweight Emergency Tent, designed by Ghassem Fardanesh with a cost of approximately $100 each. The tent is 178 square feet, with dimensions of 18’x9.8’x6.9’. It can hold four to five people and, in its compact form, weighs 91 pounds, a manageable size for one grown man to move. In 2002 the unit went into testing and is regularly dispatched to regions in need.
The design uses a tubular shape maximizing the space within the tent. It also provides the inhabitants with some air ventilation, by way of window vents, is lined at the bottom to seal and protect the inhabitants from the ground, while staying waterproof and keeping the interior dry. One of the most important, though simple, additions from the original canvas tent is the privacy flap. It may not important, but the flap eliminates some of the exploitive issues that plague refugee camps, and lessens the likelihood of physical abuse to women and children.
The agency has demonstrated interest in the Emergency Tent and has put 10,000 units into production for testing, though it may be a long time until the new tent is put into full use as their main refugee shelter.
Grip Clips
Though Robert Gills’ Grip Clips are not technically a shelter by themselves, they illustrate how something simple can make a huge impact on a design idea. The Grip Clip is made up of two pieces of interlocking plastic that attach a canvas skin or plastic material to any type of interior structure with out needing to break the seal of the cloth. The interior of the clip attaches its self via twine, zip tie, or metal strap to any interior ribbing structure. The exterior section of the clip is then attached over top of the cloth and rotated, locking the bottom half into place. This simplistic design effort “…reduces the shelter to its most fundamental element, the connection between the sheathing and the part…”
Manufactured by Shelter Systems, a set of four plastic clips cost approximately $8 to $10 dollars, a minimum price for maximum design. The original design was patented in 1979 by Robert Gills and has been in use around the world in a variety of relief efforts.
Global Village Shelters
The Global Village shelter, gives off the appearance of what a child would draw of as representative of a house. Despite its simplicity, the small shelters are quite durable and more than adequate in their use. The design has developed over the course of about ten years by Ferrara Design, Inc., by Daniel Ferrara and his daughter, Mia Ferrara. The unit costs about $400, is designed for a lifespan of about 8-12 months, but has withstood several consecutive winters in Ferrara’s backyard in Connecticut, a personal proving ground of sorts. The Unit is made up of corrugated cardboard, infused with a fire resistant coating. The simple design is present in the building of each unit, using only simple tools and some human effort. Unfortunately the units extended life span is something of concern according to the UNHRC the
shelter is “…designed ‘to last too long.’” If a shelter lasts to long it can lead to a cycle of poverty and has a habit of making people over stay their time in a unit. Since the portable homes can only be able to ship 88 units per shipping container, versus the 500 to 1000 tents per container, a clear cost-effectiveness issue arises.
Despite some of its downfalls the Global Village Shelter is in field-testing use in Grenada after a powerful hurricane swept through, destroying 85% of the island’s housing. In a design partnership with Arquitectonica of Miami and Grenada Relief, Recovery, and Reconstruction [G3], a total of 70 shelters were distributed to needy families on the island, serving as transitional homes, and health clinics.15
Through the study of these designs, their flaws, their accomplishments, and their construction methods a better design is achieved in future attempts. They create an understanding of the dialogue in which designers of emergency shelters speak, the understanding of the human condition, and its needs. By speaking that dialogue a better product is then created furthering the reach of aid to those in need.
Le Corbusier and Adaptive Dwellings
In the early 1900’s Le Corbusier began paving the way for modular design. Through his efforts in the designing adaptive dwellings for the various classes of society he produced a theory about the advantages of using “rationalize production methods for the general provision of shelter” . One such project was the Villa Radieuse.(or VR). Though the project was not designed in a kit of parts fashion, it was an excellent prototype for modular design. The project consisted of a continuous band of ‘on-line’ housing. This housing system was at its roots modular, and the system was engineered to optimize very square inch of inhabitable space. The VR building type was clearly oriented to reflect a more economic basis for home design through the use of production style methods, and theories from that project can be modified and adapted to any production based human-needs shelter project.
Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House
The idea of mass production design, like Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, were for many years a side note in architectural design since the days of Henry Ford’s mass production of the automobile. His streamlining of the manufacturing process was a revolutionary idea that changed the building of every product in the United States with one exception, the home. The modular home was investigated by numerous architects, but was secluded to strictly mobile homes and trailer parks, and was, and still is, looked down on by most homeowners as a cheap alternative to housing, but this is far from true.
Buckminster Fullers’ ideas in 1927 were far ahead of their time. His love of manufacturing and engineering created some of the most advanced homes of the 20th century. The earliest modular home designed around a “kit of parts” so to speak, would be Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion House. His design incorporated things as advanced as automatic doors, “light tube” style lighting, and use of natural energy. You could even argue that Mr. Fuller was one of the first to pioneer the uses of environmental design in his buildings.
The Dymaxion House, and predecessors like the Dymaxion Deployment Unit, are some of the most well thought out prefabricated houses to this day. During design development Fuller kept some simple but important considerations:
1. Mass Production
2. Package Distribution
3. Quick Erection
4. Low Cost
5. Flexible Orientation
6. Fire Resistance
7. Conclusion Resistance
8. Air Protection
9. Demountability
These simple design rules allowed Fuller to design an inexpensive modular shelter that reused material from other structures (in this case converted grain bins) to create a structure that is comfortable, durable, and one that will last. Using these rules for designing a structure for disaster relief is clearly apparent, and can be a great asset to any designer’s toolset.
Current Mass Production
Methodologies
The home building process is an incredibly in depth process. In the early days, the architect was no more than a master builder. They had to have the all of the knowledge of how a building was put together. However today, a master builder is no longer a master, but more like a group of masters, who collectively put together a building. It takes an Architect, a Product Engineer, a Builder, a Material Scientist, an Electrical Engineer, an HVAC Engineer… An Architect has to streamline this entire process, and make it work and with all these different builders and engineers its amazing that anything gets built at all.
There are over 81 different product production methods available to more than just industrial designers. With so many production types out there one would think the home would have been, by this day in age, mass produced, like that of a car. According to “…Daimler/Chrysler, a process engineer divides the car into constituent chunks, or modules.” They are built by production teams and assembled, sometimes off site, and then shipped to the final assembly line. If this is the case, then the pieces of a building could also be designed similar to those of a car and then shipped to the main build area. If a home can be designed in a series of interchangeable pieces that could be shipped to a site, the construction of that building would take a third of the time it would normally take using less man power and keeping waste production to a minimum.
Katrina Cottage
Current production designed homes on the market have been developed for a small set of consumers, the private owner who wants a custom home that is modular in nature, the mobile home consumer, and the government, (for housing aid purposes), as well as other smaller groups of consumers.
The disaster relief aid sector has been trying to change, but is slow to adopt new designs. The hurricane Katrina relief efforts consisted of mobile home trailers, costing $70,000 each. Late 2005 an alternative to the FEMA trailer was introduced, called the Katrina Cottage. This small cottage is not a new idea, and a similar design was built after the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake when six thousand two room homes were built to replace the army tents provided by the government. Unfortunately the new Katrina Cottage costs $60,000. Though its already $10,000 less than the FEMA trailer, its not nearly cheap enough. The 650sqft home costs around $100 a square foot and is built using pre-manufactured walls, shipped and erected on site. However a good builder can produce a home for roughly $40 a square foot, with all the amenities of your average house. This is an excellent response to the call for new production homes, post hurricane Katrina but more needs to be done, and these homes are not easily expandable.
Hive Modular
The recent development of larger scale modular design projects has become popular over the past few years. Economically they should be more affordable and easier to produce. Hive Modular, an architectural firm out of Minneapolis, Minnesota has been receiving some publicity for their highly modifiable modular homes. The firm has four different modular design units, each with multiple variations of the same unit.
These various shape configurations allow for a very dynamic product, but as the design becomes more custom it also becomes harder to ship and to place on site. It needs to have a slab or footing poured before being mounted in place, but when this is accomplished it can be erected with in three to five days. Most of these cumbersome modular designed homes require a great deal of energy to move and need a crane to place them. On top of that they also cost between two and three hundred thousand dollars plus the price of the site. This makes them a poor choice in times of need because they are so hard to move and place. The Idea of customization is essential to the development of the individuals desire to make a place for themselves. As the person is included in the design or even choosing from a series of options for their home, they become attached to it and over time it then becomes home.
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