Brookside Becomes Home To Container House

kmbc.com

KANSAS CITY, MO. -- A Brookside neighborhood is about to become home to the area's first container house.

The house at 60th and Charlotte streets is made of used, stainless steel cargo containers. The 40'x8' containers are similar to the ones you'd see on trains and tractor-trailers, except the ones for the house are taller.

"The top two containers will be a master bedroom suite. They have walk-in closets, full bath and shower," said Debbie Glassberg with Home Contained LLC.

Glassberg plans to live in the Brookside home, and she hopes to build others like it. Read more...

Did you feel that earthquake? Do you have a plan?

Posted by kstohr on Aug 23, 2011,  Architecture for Humanity

As an earthquake rocked the Eastern seaboard today, it's another reminder to take stock in each and everyone of our communities of our preparedness planning for a major natural or man-made disaster.

It's not just about designing and warehousing shelter. If you are concerned about your community, have you thought about the following:

1) Do you have a plan, but more importantly, do you have the financial instruments in place that will allow the plan to be executed? Those take longer to setup than any other aspect of disaster reconstruction and are too often ignored.

2) Where will you house your residents? Preparedness is knowing where you are going to build transitional shelter and executing planning and zoning permits, easements, etc. in advance.

3) Does your community have a clear understanding of how many it may need to shelter? It’s not 100% of your population...

Most disaster preparedness focuses on evacuation and immediate response, that addresses only half of the issues that arise. NYC and NY State through Office of Emergency Management worked with our local New York City chapter to start thinking through some of these longer-term housing issues. Only city i know of that is working to develop a housing strategy that truly addresses the dense population of an urban environment-- in advance of catastrophe.

Read more...

Tata announces world’s cheapest (flatpack) house

Tata Group, the company behind the ‘world’s cheapest car’ the Tata Nano, has announced the development of its latest product: the ‘Nano’ flatpack house. Yes, Tata is now looking to claim the title of offering the world’s cheapest house on the market.

Dubbed the Nano house, the flatpack dwelling comes with pre-fabricated materials, including doors and windows, for a house of around 20 square metres in size. Materials consist of coconut or jute cladding complete with interior layouts. The proposed price of the ready-to-assemble kit is said to be just $US700 (around AU$660). Read more...

Indonesian village vanishes in wake of tsunami

Haiti's plight

Six months after Haiti was ravaged by the fifth deadliest earthquake in history (according to the U.S. Geological Survey), it's hard to find anybody involved in the reconstruction effort who isn't deeply frustrated by the lack of progress. Relief organizations rail against the Haitian government for its failure to come up with a plan for removing debris or perform other vital logistical duties; government ministers fire back that the nonprofits are confusing matters by failing to coordinate their efforts. Former President Clinton, co-chairman of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission, is irked at international donors that have been slow to honor their commitments. Read more...

Haiti Relief Is Not Charity: A Rights-Based Approach to Aid

Haiti's January 2010 earthquake left more than 230,000 dead, 300,000-plus injured, 1.5 million homeless and physically leveled 28 of 29 government ministries. In response, the international community pledged 5.5 billion dollars in aid to rebuild Haiti. Today, only 10 percent of the promised funding has reached its shores. Read more..

Transitional Shelter

by David Snyder
Whipped by winds on a mountain slope in northern Pakistan, Graham Saunders moves carefully amid the shattered remains of a mud-walled village, surveying the damage caused by a powerful earthquake in October, 2005. Sliding a digital camera from his hip pocket, he photographs each pile of splintered timber and stone. As an architect who has encountered many similar scenes for the last decade, his mind is already on what it will take to rebuild here. Read more

UNICEF: Young survivors discuss life in Haiti's camps

Slugglish Progress, Resilient People

Young tenants of Haiti's quake camps :: Media Center :: News from the Field :: U.S. Fund for UNICEF - UNICEF USA

Young tenants of Haiti's quake camps :: Media Center :: News from the Field :: U.S. Fund for UNICEF - UNICEF USA

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Rains Swamp Haiti's Homeless

Emergency Relief housing, Chilie.

Rev. Felipe Berrios's award-winning organization has in less than 15 years nearly gotten all Chilean families into permanent housing. His group is now joining the effort to help those made homeless by the Chile earthquake. Read more.

Disaster/Emergency & Low Income Housing

Aquentium is uniquely positioned to provide better living conditions for those individuals or governments seeking low income housing or for those devastated by a disaster or emergency. Read more ..

GREEN TRANSITIONAL SHELTER - DESIGN OPTION

Every year natural disasters and man made conflicts displace millions of people all over the world.
Often the financial and material aids received are insufficient to address their basic needs. Recovering damaged sites left with debris require lot of manpower, energy and take years to rebuild. In the mean while people live in temporary shelter for years waiting to return to their home. Impact on the psychology of the displaced poeple are immence. If they are given a chance to get involved in the process of rebuiling, they would start recovering gradually.

Emergency shelter is temporary and intended just to provide shelter for survival. Transitional implies shelter is longer–term and gives space to carry out livelihood activities than just surviving. The Transitional shelters will be altered, added gradually with the availability of financial and matrrial aid. Transitional shelters also makes less burden on the donors, as they do not have to provide large sum of aid at once but gradually transfer aid as the funds becomes available.

This post it the continuation of the post dated 12/04/2008 Green Basic Transitional Shelter, in search of answers to "Is it possible to provide a GREENER, COMMUNITY INVOLVED, IMMEDIATE transitional shelter response?"

Solution addresses the following;
• Less need of skilled labor
• Easy constructability
• Less new material
• Low cost
• Modules - flexibility in design
• Eco friendly solution
• Empowerment of people

The base is similar concept to gabion walls. The above ground structure out of timber pallets and the base is made out of pieces of bricks, stones stacked in chicken mesh cells. The steps to build the shelter is shown in the earlier post dated 12/04/2008 Green Basic Transitional Shelter.

Data is from "Monster of Design 2008" submission by Charmalee Jayawardena. Photo credit : Charmalee Jayawardena

GREEN BASIC TRANSITIONAL SHELTER ?

WALLS; POST CONSUMER RECYCLE MATERIAL Salvaged Stone, brick, concrete from damaged buildings.

WALL CELL; POST CONSUMER RECYCLE MATERIAL Steel mesh contains 90% recycle material .

FLOORING; POST CONSUMER RECYCLE MATERIAL 48’x48” timber pallets from pallet yards

ROOFING; POST CONSUMER RECYCLE MATERIAL 48’x48” timber pallets from pallet yards

Steps of building the shelter as follows;

Hexagonal wire netting (chicken mesh) woven with quality steel offers good corrosion resistant, flat surface & firm structure.
Available in easily transportable 78" width rolls.

Measuring and cutting of the mesh to predetermined measurements to create 2'6" high 2'6" deep 4'6" wide cells.

Panels will be distributed among the displaced families.

Mesh folded into cells in their home site. Families will help one another to rebuild their shelters.

Cells will be laid on the site, where the walls will be. Stacking the cell with pieces of stones, bricks and concrete etc. salvaged from site. Note: Concept similar to "Gabion wall construction"

Closing lid of cell and tying edges with leftover wire mesh. Once the bottom row of cells are stacked and closed, second row of cells will be stacked on top of the bottom row. Next the cells will be stacked with stones, bricks etc materials salvaged from the site.

completed cells stacked and created the base of the shelters

Timber pallets(48”x48”) salvaged from pallet yards will be distributed among families to add above grade structure and finishing to complete the shelter.

Data is from "Monster of Design 2008" submission by Charmalee Jayawardena. Photo credit : Charmalee Jayawardena

“TRANSITIONAL" AS OPPOSED TO "TEMPORARY"

According to “Protracted Refugee Situations” UNHCR, June 2004, the average duration of major refugee situations has increased from 9 years (1993) to 17 years (2003).

Emergency shelter is temporary and intended just to provide shelter for survival. Often the financial and material aids received are insufficient to address their basic needs. Recovering damaged sites left with debris require lot of manpower, energy and take years to rebuild.

Creating transitional shelters which are more long term, gives space to carry out livelihood activities than just surviving.

Is it possible to provide a GREENER, COMMUNITY INVOLVED, IMMEDIATE transitional shelter response?

Data is collected from "Design like you give a damn" book Habitat for Humanity. Photo credit : Ambassador Airlines