When designing a post-disaster temporary shelter, it is beneficial, both in time and expenses, to develop a design process, as well as specific criteria for the design. In a time-lacking design situation, such as an eleven month thesis project, modifying a previously developed design process and criteria to fit your environmental conditions can save time that can be used for a number of thing: to interview the people of New Orleans to discover their “needs” and “wants” in a temporary shelter, developing a better shelter design, and creating a scaled shelter prototype.
Image 1 - Interviewing the users to discover their needs and wants in a shelter
To respond to a JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) report, stating that Istanbul will soon experience a catastrophic earthquake leaving 600,000 people homeless, the MobARCH research project was designed to develop a temporary shelter for when an earthquake does strike. The main goal of the MobARCH project was to take the needs and requirements of the users into consideration when designing a shelter, while having minimal impacts on the built environment.
Their design process is composed of four processes: setting objectives, developing a design, evaluating the design, and creating alternatives to find the “best” design. During these procedures, the MobARCH’s project only uses two types of information sources including past experiences and past temporary shelters. Therefore, they are deploying similar philosophical ideals conveyed in this thesis. Through their research, they have determined that imperfections are mainly caused from past shelters not being analyzed for their inhabitants or the environment. This has been proven after researching the Yanikoy-Kocaeli temporary shelter camp. In the camp,
it was observed that 48% of the users have made modifications both indoors and outdoors to their shelter unit, 30% of the users have made modifications only outdoors, and 3% of the users have made modifications only indoors. Only 19% of the users have not made any modifications to their shelter units (Sener, 2009, p. 61).
Image 2 - Architects, engineers, and the area's locals come together to create the best solution possible
In the design process, MobARCH uses seven criteria when designing: materials, ecological aspects, the design cost, aesthetics, a building’s physics, spatial organization, and sociological aspects. These seven criteria are then broken down into thirty sub categories including: structural performance, fast assembly, indoor climatic control, thermal performance, privacy, lighting, room interaction, visual aesthetics, and responding to the elderly and disabled. Even to MobARCH standards, it is impossible to design for every possible situation that could occur. Therefore, the following list covers the highest ranking criteria, and possible solution to design a temporary shelter after. These bulleted criteria come directly (cited) from the MobARCH research project guidelines (Sener, 2009, p. 66-67).
v The basic material for the unit shall be wood in fulfilling design criteria such as: “avoiding environmental pollution of any kind,” “using recyclable materials,” and “creating sustainability.”
v The shelter shall be constructed of prefabricated wood panels in fulfilling design criteria such as: “ease of construction” and “ease of manufacturing.”
v The panels shall be 220 pounds in weight at most and 9’ x 3’ in dimensions in fulfilling design criteria such as: “ease of transportation.”
v The prefabricated wood panels shall have simple connecting details and limited components in fulfilling design criteria such as: “ease of assembly.”
v The prefabricated panels shall be a sandwich panel with mineral thermal insulation in fulfilling design criteria such as: “interior climatic comfort” and “energy efficiency.”
v The two sub units shall provide optimum space in fulfilling criteria such as: “space requirements related to basic actions” and “acoustical and visual privacy.”
v The unit shall give the opportunity to be constructed by the users themselves in fulfilling design criteria such as: “user’s aesthetic preferences,” “allowing personalization,” and “creating social relations.”
The sub-criteria, listed above, are taken into consideration, with the accumulated knowledge, to design the best possible solution for a post-disaster temporary shelter. Following their design process, the second to last step, after employing a prototype, is evaluating the shelter in the built environment. The last phase is determining the flaws and providing a timely solution to them. In the end, after following the MobARCH’s design process, the product can be a well designed shelter that fits the needs of the inhabitants, as well as the built environment (Sener, 2009).
Text
Sener, S. (2009 February). Design of a Post-Disaster Temporaty Shelter Unit, ITU AIZ. 6, 69-72.
Images
Image 1 - http://amandaw89.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/volunteer-in-an-interview.jpg
Image 2 - http://artmorrical.com/photo_gallery/2004%20Architects%20meeting.JPG
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