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“The city of Los Angeles has worked very hard to brand these as tiny homes as if they are a housing solution, which they absolutely are not,” said Shayla Myers, a senior attorney at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. “In reality, these are tiny sheds.” — The New York Times
Firsthand accounts of what it’s like to live inside one of the eleven tiny home villages scattered across parts of the San Fernando Valley and northeast LA often underscore their value as bulwarks against unsheltered homelessness in the city. Feedback from on-site mental health professionals... View full entry
Toronto-based Dubbeldam Architecture + Design has offered an insight into their completed cabin in rural Ontario, Canada. Named Bunkie on the Hill and described as a “quiet haven in the trees for family members to retreat and re-connect with nature,” the cabin sits at the top of a steep slope... View full entry
Montreal-based Atelier L’Abri has completed an experimental camping concept project in the Canadian wilderness. Named Territoire Charlevoix, and located in a forest between La Malbaie and Baie-Saint-Paul, the scheme is described as “a series of structures that are simple, yet varied; familiar... View full entry
Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) are once again in action deploying their patented Paper Partition System in the wake of the recent 7.7 magnitude quake that struck western Japan in the early hours of New Year’s Day. The indoor privacy system that the Pritzker Prize winner... View full entry
Current seismic codes require public buildings to be built strong enough so they don’t fall down in a quake. Now, some emergency preparedness advocates want to raise the bar. Not only should essential buildings resist collapse in a strong earthquake, but also newly constructed schools, in particular, should be built so in the immediate aftermath they can be counted on to serve as relief centers. — Oregon Capital Chronicle
The article mentions the AIA Oregon chapter’s efforts to push lawmakers towards adopting more stringent building codes in preparation for a cataclysmic 9.0 Cascadia earthquake. Some relatively cheaper proactive measures, such as tsunami towers, are being enacted, but the 1,000 or so schools... View full entry
Shigeru Ban and the Voluntary Architects’ Network have shared news of their delivery of several Paper Log House prototypes in Morocco in response to the devastating 6.8 magnitude earthquake that displaced over 30,000 people recently, according to disaster response statistics assembled by the UN... View full entry
Shigeru Ban Architects is operating in Turkey in response to the devastating earthquake that killed more than 50,000 across the region last month while leaving an estimated 3 million unsheltered in two countries. The firm’s non-profit Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN) released details Thursday... View full entry
With more than 3.7 million Ukrainian refugees fleeing the country and another 6.5 million internally displaced, architects in Ukraine have been hard-pressed to put their skills to work by creating the necessary shelters and accommodations required for those uprooted by the... View full entry
Shigeru Ban had been working with students from the Wrocław University of Science and Technology on the influx of Ukrainian refugees sheltering in a converted former supermarket in Chelm, Poland, where they were able to construct and install 319 privacy partitions over a four-day span. He now... View full entry
A new honor has its inaugural winner after the international Créateurs Design Awards (CDA) announced Sir David Adjaye as the recipient of the first-ever Charlotte Perriand Award. The award goes in recognition of a living architect whose career achievements thus far have paralleled that of its... View full entry
Long Beach-based Studio One Eleven has announced plans to convert a former medical office designed by midcentury modern architect Edward Killingsworth into an "essential service center" that will provide services for needy families as well as food for area residents experiencing food... View full entry
The new Tupelo shelters are designed to be easily and strategically combined with additional rigid-walled Tupelo shelters as well as soft tent shelters. [...] the new shelter’s dynamic design can adapt to fit needs in healthcare for treatment and testing, and perhaps in the evolving classroom setting as well. The shelter can be “flat-packed,” meaning the shelter walls can be stacked on top of each other for high-volume, rapid transportation to affected areas. — Composites World
Rhode Island-based Core Composites, a leading company that has built and designed advanced composite-based, rigid-wall shelters for the U.S. military, is working to quickly develop an easily deployable shelter that can be used for COVID-19 testing and treatment, and to aid over-capacity hospitals. View full entry
With the ‘Bedsteeg’ – a wordplay on the traditional Dutch sleeping accommodation ‘bedstede’ – Roegiers is now bringing attention to residual urban space that can be used to improve living conditions for the homeless. ‘It is about certain basic human needs that have to be met for a homeless person to become strong enough – both mentally and physically – to regain independence,’ he told local newspaper Het Parool. — Pop-Up City
As his graduation project for Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, Patrick Roegiers created a simple cardboard house. Wedged between two existing buildings, covered in water-resistant coating and 3 meters high, the structure is meant to provide homeless people with a warm and dry place to sleep... View full entry
World-renowned architect Shigeru Ban sprang into action again in a disaster zone by setting up temporary “homes” to give flooding victims here some much-needed privacy.
Ban, members of his Voluntary Architects’ Network (VAN) and student volunteers used recycled paper tubes and pieces of fabric to create partitions for evacuees in the gymnasium of the Sono Elementary School in the Mabicho district on July 14.
— Asahi Shimbun
Torrential downpours and subsequent floods and mudslides have devastated parts of Western Japan in recent weeks. With over 250 people dead or missing and more than 8 million people under evacuation order, this has reportedly been one of the country's most severe natural disasters in years... View full entry
Three years in the making, this cozy wilderness cabin in Slovakia's Kysuce region looks much more spacious inside than its 40m2 size. Michiel De Backer and Martin Mikovčák of Ark Shelter Studio designed the modular getaway cabin with several large windows that help occupants reconnect with... View full entry