Rafael Smith designed the Uber Shelter as part of his Master’s thesis project. The goal of his temporary shelter is to create a design that can be logistically brought to a site after a natural disaster. His shelter comes to the desired site as a kit-of parts which measures 4’-0” x 8’-0” x 2’-6”. This kit includes every component that is needed to assemble the two-story, three room structure. Some of the components include walls made from corrugated polypropylene, a roof made from a UV resistant material, and telescoping support legs. The multi-story unit allows for increased living space in a small land footprint by utilizing vertical space. This feature is beneficial in urban disaster areas where land is scarce, such as Haiti. The shelter has 190 square feet of interior space with a 69 square foot exterior porch and takes up an 8’-0” x 16’-0” footprint.
Image 1 - Rafael Smith, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, standing next to his Uber Shelter's kit-of-parts
In the spring of 2011, Rafael Smith wanted to take his shelter to Haiti to conduct a pilot study after the earthquake. The goal of the pilot study is to work with the families living in the Uber Shelter to understand, from the users ‘perspective, how to improve the product. Therefore, Rafael supplied two incredible families with their own Uber Shelter. It took Rafael two weeks to find the perfect families to be the recipients of his shelter. The first shelter was built in the urban camp setting of Adokin in Haiti. While Rafael was there, he found Genesis and his family. After spending the day with them, Rafael decided to choose them to be the recipient for the first shelter. After Genesis’s shelter was constructed, he told Rafael that he wanted to partake in the second shelter’s construction process.
Rafael observed Genesis and his family, for a week, to discover their reactions while living within the Uber Shelter. The day after the shelter’s construction, Genesis constructed an 8’-0” tall fence, of scrap wood and tarps, around the perimeter of his land. Therefore, privacy is very important to the Haitian people. During the shelter’s design process, Rafael envisioned that the exterior porch area would be open and used for exterior cooking. However, per Genesis and their community, cooking is a private event and should the exterior porch area should be enclosed for two main reasons. The first reason for the indoor cooking is that the neighbors can make judgment on how much income a family makes based on the food the family cooks; therefore, indoor cooking is required. The second reason for indoor cooking is the camps’ dirt roads can cause a lot of airborne dust and dirt.
Image 2 - A community comes together to help build a shelter for Magdala and her family
After the first shelter was built, Rafael met Magdala, through his translator, in a tent camp in Port-au-Prince. Magdala lives there with her mother and daughter. After losing their home in the earthquake, Magdala’s sister moved out of the city to Croix-des-Bouquets with her husband and two children. They currently live in a plywood shelter that is surrounded by tall cinder-block walls. Magadala’s sister offered to help her move out of the tent camp and onto a plot of land near her, as soon as she can afford to build a shelter. The tent camp Magdala currently lives in can be dangerous due to only having a thin piece of tarp separating them from the exterior elements. Therefore, Rafael believes Magdala and her family must be experimenting some insecurities about their current living conditions. Due to this, Rafael decided to construct the second Uber Shelter for Magadala and her family, near her sister.
Image 3 - The process to take the Uber shelter from a kit-of-parts to a temporary sheltering structure
Once the shelter was constructed, Rafale quickly realized that some of the “emergency shelter” features of the Uber Shelter were not reflecting the needs of Magdala and her family. To solve some of the issues, Rafael decided to beef-up the original design to create a more permanent structure. “The canvas roof was replaced with a corrugated steel roof, plywood walls were added behind the vinyl fabric on the first floor for security, shelving was added in the interior, and a plywood door with locks replaced the Velcro door. Initially, Rafael thought the steel roof might turn the shelter into an oven; however, the shiny metal reflected the sun and the punched out windows provided an enormous amount of ventilation.
Another addition to the original design was a light-weight foundation to help distribute the shelter’s weight more evenly on the soft soil, much like that of snow shoes. Once leveled and squared, holes were drilled through the two 2x6 “snow shoes.” Then the earth anchors, provided by Platypus Earth Anchors, were hammered deep into the ground and tensioned for the desired need. The anchors secure the shelter from any vertical uplift, via strong winds. Due to Haiti’s extreme summer heat and the modifications to the shelter, Magdala’s shelter was constructed in two days. In normal situations, the Uber Shelter, with the help of a community, can be constructed in only a matter of hours. In addition, the shelter was slightly damaged during the transportation to the two desired sites. Therefore, Rafael made a note of how to prevent this problem in the future.
Image 4 - The Uber Shelter sits among other shelters in the Port-au-Prince commnunity
Once both of the shelters were constructed in Haiti, Rafael began to take in the community and their culture. In his spare time, he got to play with the children in the area. He helped them refine their homemade bows and arrows. To help make their arrows fly straighter, Rafael fashioned mock feathers out of corners of plastic water bags. In addition, Rafael stayed at Magdala’s sister’s house during the shelters construction. While there he enjoyed a relaxing evening watching the sunset with the family. After sunset, the family held hands during a family prayer. Then they sat down to eat cornmeal porridge under the glow of a kerosene lantern.
Text
From Package to Home. (n.d). retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://ubershelter.
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