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Abstract
An emergency shelter design as an immediate response to assist people in disaster situations was evaluated in this study. The design experiment concerns the use of recyclable paper tubes and simple construction techniques so that unskilled labor can quickly and readily assemble the shelter where required. The design exercise is a result of a joint effort of a group of architecture students at Inha University with the help of an architect, Shigeru Ban, who is renowned for his innovative work with paper tubes. In the first phase, five different design alternatives for a short term recovery option are proposed and in the second phase, a design was selected and developed on the full scale to demonstrate its design and assembly technique.
Keywords: Emergency Shelter, Post-Disaster, Recyclable Paper Tube, Deployable Joint System.
1.INTRODUCTION
The number of refuges worldwide has been continuously increasing. According to UNHCR, the number reached nearly 59.5 million at the end of 2014, which is a sharp increase compared to 45.2 million in 2012 and 37.5 million in 2005.1 The increase is mostly due to sudden disasters within limited areas where people must escape their homes, seeking safety elsewhere. In the initial stage of emergency situations, access to a quick and transient shelter as opposed to well-crafted and skillful structures is immediately required. A shelter is a basic need in the emergency phase of humanitarian disasters where people have an urgent need for shelter.
Although many different types of shelters for humanitarian relief operations have been proposed and designed to develop better solutions, there is still a high demand for more efficient and reliable emergency shelters due to the growth in the number of refugees. In addition, the majority of existing temporary shelters are costly and difficult to erect in a short period of time.
Rather than waiting for the provision of tents or other shelters from relief organizations, it is critical for many people whose homes are affected by disasters to perform shelter work as soon as possible, using materials and tools that they are able to salvage from their damaged home and communities or which can be affordably sourced from their surroundings.
This study proposes an emergency shelter as a shelter option. While experimenting with multiple design options through...