ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: The interdisciplinary design team involved in this project saw it as an opportunity to help populations ravaged by natural disasters by applying our combined talents to the development of an efficient, economical, and environmentally responsible emergency shelter. In this paper the authors describe how their team of faculty and students worked collaboratively to design not just a shelter, but also the process by which it would be produced, erected and delivered. After establishing the role of shelters within the larger context of disaster relief, the authors discuss their methodology of using full-scale prototypes in actual materials, briefly describe initial studies for the shelter, then focus on the last two generations of prototypes, describing optimization efforts to reduce weight and simplify both fabrication and construction. Employing digital fabrication techniques to build the prototypes, the authors speculate on how digital methods might facilitate future large-scale production at regional locations around the world rather than one central facility.
