Displaced by natural, economic, or political catastrophes, the number of people "of concern" to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is about 20 million-one in every 300 in the world. Hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis are now on the move, fleeing conflict. Floods in India and Senegal in the past year have left countless homeless. Bosnian refugees are still trying to return to their homes despite the devastation. Millions more "internally displaced persons" in Colombia, Indonesia, and elsewhere have extended the conception of refugees beyond the expatriated to include those displaced within their own countries. In the wake of disasters both natural and man-made, the provision of emergency shelter, in addition to food and water, is the most pressing challenge for local governments, international agencies, and humanitarian aid organizations.
As expected some of the best concepts for emergency housing take advantage of cheap, easily transported, or local materials.
NADER KHALILI (HESPERIA, CALIFORNIA):
SUPERADOBE EMERGENCY SHELTER
Refugee Housing in Khuzestan (Persian Gulf) built by the refugees with the U.N. to Khalili's design
Nader Khalili conceived of the "superadobe" as a system for the construction of lunar colonies for NASA in 1984. But the system was destined for more earthly pursuits. In 1991, Khalili's California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture tested the architect's dirt-dome prototypes and eventually passed seismic tests to meet California's stringent building codes. cheap, sustainable, easy to build, and structurally sound, his domes are constructed mainly of on-site materials: Standard polypropylene sandbags, 14 to 18 inches in diameter and up to a mile in length, are filled with dirt, sand, or clay, wound in circular or spiraling forms, and held in place with barbed wire in between each layer. One house, up to 16 feet wide, can be built in a day by a family of four. It can last decades if cement is added to the soil mix or if the exterior is plastered, as is the case with a community in Southern Iran.
Nader Khalili, an Iranian-born architect and longtime faculty member at SCI-Arc, has developed a technology he calls "superadobe," using on-site earth as its prime building material. Extra long sandbags, 14 to 18 inches in diameter, are filled with local dirt, sand, or clay and wound into spiraling forms. Barbed wire is placed between each layer, acting as mortar, and the result is a self-supporting, reinforced adobe system. Cement can be added to the dirt mix, or dome exteriors can be plastered for added longevity. "The structures make the materials of war--sandbags and barbed wire--into materials of peace," notes Khalili, who founded the California Institute of Earth Art and Architecture (known as Cal-Earth) in 1991 to focus on housing for the world's poor. Last year, Omar Bakhet and Lorenzo Jiminez de Luis, then both of the Emergency Response Division of the UN Development Program (UNDP), visited Cal-Earth and slept in the domes. Finding the shelter buildable, stable, and dignified, they recommended "superadobe" as a potential housing solution for Middle East refugees. On the request of the UNDP and UNHCR, Khalili taught his building method to a UN architect, who subsequently trained refugees in the region to build their own homes. To date, a dozen have been constructed in Southern Iran.
The use of local materials has added logic: Structures attuned to cultural context can help repair some of the psychological trauma of losing one's home. "Even refugees want to live in something that is familiar to them as a house," says Jiminez de Luis.
Increasingly, governments and relief agencies are acknowledging that emergency shelters must sometimes serve as the basis for long-term community building and economic development. Because emergency shelers are often used for several years, some architects are exploring how a transitional shelter can evolve into a permanent one, and how refugee camps can become the foundation for new towns or hamlets.
Lack of funds and bureaucratic inaction on the part of governments and some aid agencies, not to mention the as yet unparalleled speed with which it can be dispatched, remain the main reasons why the blue tarp has prevailed in Timor, Africas's Great Lakes region, the Balkans, and other disaster-struck pockets of the world.
"The immediate response to disaster is to provide temporary shelter," says Jiminez de Luis, newly named deputy representative of the UNDP in Honduras. "But the mandate of the UNDP is more oriented toward transition, which requires longer-term projects, and is harder to raise funds for." Emergency money, however, is more readily available, so he encourages emergency responses that adopt an "integrated development model, with initial investments made in lasting houses and income-generating activities around these houses."
In many ways, UN agencies and other relief nonprofits find their hands are tied, because local governments decide how and what kind of emergency shelter gets built. "We can carry out our own research, and make recommendations and introductions," says Jimenez de Luis, "but we cannot go into a sovereign country and make local governments do anything."