the aftermath of an emergency situation, relief agencies struggle to provide food, water and shelter to those displaced. Our team is addressing the issue of how can we respond in a quick and efficient manner to provide people with adequate shelter in a sustainable manner. A natural disaster such as flood, fire or earthquakes can claim whole residential neighborhoods, leaving the community with nothing. They are ill suited to be able to rebuild after such a loss because of economic hardship and possibly because the land may no longer suitable for redevelopment. And they urgently need a home.

People may be forced to abandon their community, and social support network. They will likely have to relocate in temporary housing in the intermediate term until the crisis resolves itself. This experience compounds the distress and agony that the displaced people experience. It is desirable to have a strategy and the means to relocate communities while providing them with the foundation to begin anew. They should be able to be active participants in reconstructing their shelters and community, to the greatest extent possible.

The Unidad Dionisio team is developing a strategy to provide affordable, and self-sustaining shelters that evacuees can quickly construct with little actual training. We envision shelters that can harness environmental processes, taking advantage of solar and wind energy and harvest water to serve the inhabitants. We are working to develop a prototype house design that can be quickly constructed in a few days by a group of laymen or as required, the main shell and interior of the home can be pre-fabricated off-site for quicker installation.

These structures can serve as emergency relief housing, and even more promising is that they can be converted into permanent affordable housing in time. The basic shelter can accommodate two families during crisis times. It can then be adapted and fully outfitted for a single family home once the crisis has passed. Part of the urban planning phase of this project will involve developing settlement patterns that can be de-intensified to accommodate municipal standard road widths, so that the remaining shelters form a “pre-developed” community. The modular units can be relocated, or added on to another shelter to increase the living space, thus accommodating a range of housing needs post-disaster.

Currently, we have the ability to capture sun and wind energy with minimal effort. Utilizing a new invention by Shawn Frayne, called the Windbelt, we will harness this technology to inexpensively capture wind energy through the inclusion of multiple units of a vibrating belt mechanism that generates electricity on-site. Passive solar gain can be stored in a thermal-mass wall to provide most of the heat required for a small home. This wall can be made of rammed earth taken from the site where the house is located. Heating of air and water can be supplemented by photovoltaic panels which can supply all or some of the power as well. Strategically placed windows and site placement can render air conditioners obsolete. However, depending upon the micro-climate, the cooling can be supplemented by low energy alternatives like ground coupling using air, standard evaporative or desiccant dehumidification evaporative air cooling. We would like to use this model shelter to show that it is possible for anyone to have a sustainable, healthy home. We want to show that it is possible to have a modern-day barn-raising, where a group of people can put up a house together. We want to disconnect our dependence on the model of market-driven houses built in an endless sea of suburbs. By providing people with a house that has a low environmental cost, that has low operating costs, we hope to make home ownership even possible for a family who has lost everything in a natural disaster.

The “trim-tab” concept of this design is the innovative, hinged roof/floor panel system that is connected via a structural steel hinge to the central wall bisecting the plan in an east-west direction. This enables the shelter to take on multiple forms depending upon the occupant capacity, local climate and future evolution of the structure. As the images show, the hinged panels can form a gable roof to shed water; a “v”-shape, inverted gable, to collect rain to store water for irrigation and internal use; and a flat floor for stacking multiple levels on top for higher density housing.

The prototype of the “emergency-shelter-into-home” has already been designed, and Unidad Dionisio team is seeking funding to construct the test models. The cost of a two-family emergency shelter is estimated at $35,00 and each single-family home is estimated at $45,000 for the basic structural shell, and another $20,000 to convert it to a fully livable home. The grant money from the Buckminster Fuller Challenge could be used to develop one shelter and one model home and outfit them with low-energy technologies, which would be developed and tested in two different climate zones. Our team will also seek donations in materials and time to construct the test model, which will then be donated to a low-income family for long-term testing, in accordance with the terms determined by the donors. This will allow our team to refine the different elements of the model to suit the different climates that the house may be required to adapt to.

In anticipation of a future disaster, there is much further work to be done to be able to have an effective response. Our team will work towards production capacity by working with local New Mexico affordable housing programs and groups such as Habitat for Humanity to fine tune a manufacturing process that can produce green structurally insulated panel systems (SIPS) and other structural and non-structural materials and components. Our team will develop a process to provide building kits to the end user, along with a training video and printed materials created by Kemper Barkhurst that will explain the technical parts of putting the shelter together. The manufacturing process will become economically viable through partnerships with local governments in New Mexico.

Once the first phase of the design and testing is complete, we can expand the process to Mexico to test our concept of developing local capacity for the manufacturing process in a foreign country with different socio-economic conditions than in the USA. We will work with local manufacturers and materials to construct the SIPS panels and find local businesses that can produce the hardware. At this stage, we will incorporate local adaptations to the design so that it fits with the vernacular architecture and building practices as much as possible.

We will document each phase of the process to gain a better understanding of what is required to quickly gear up production and how to make local connections to help employ local laborers and to reduce the need for transport of materials and components, thus reducing the total carbon dioxide expended in the process. A final key element of the test phase will be to make connections with national and international relief agencies to promote this shelter. We will provide the design to the agencies without charge, and our team members can also serve as consultants for the process of developing manufacturing capacity and putting together the kits. We believe that our modular housing solution meets the need for sustainable emergency or temporary housing that can be converted or reused for permanent housing.

Gregory Sandoval, AIA is an architect with over 20 years experience in architecture and design-build. He has two professional degrees in architecture. He has designed and built passive solar houses of adobe, rammed earth, and frame construction. He is knowledgeable in natural lighting, ventilation and evaporative cooling techniques, as well as cabinetry and furniture design and construction. He has had his own firm for 13 years in New Mexico.

Our design science solution to providing sustainable emergency shelter will be furthered by our strategic partnerships with innovative technology manufacturers in the low energy building-related fields of wind energy, solar energy capture, alternative materials, insulation and bio-boards. The constructing and testing phase will help us identify partners who can produce low-cost and emergent technologies to incorporate in the shelter/home.

Our holistic response to the need for shelter considers the full cost—including the embodied energy that goes into the materials, the potential for reuse and recycling of the materials and their lifespan and durability. We have considered the amount of energy that is required to operate and live in the house, and will test for the possibility for developing settlements that are off-the-grid, and self-sustaining.

http://www.sandovalarchitecture.com/