Haiti Mountain House
Single Family House Prototype and Community
2010-
[in progress]

The project is a house prototype module for disaster relief areas - Haiti. The house is designed with the intent of creating a small self-sustained community. Our proposal seeks to minimize the area for a single house. The plan is divided into four 8’ x 8’ modules; each serving as a room. A bathroom/kitchen core divides the enclosed area into a sleeping quarter and a living/dining area. The fourth module is an exterior porch, which in turn can shift within the plan and provide a variety of public areas. The ‘L’ shape produced by the porch allows for the housing unit to be repeated in a small community while generating a private garden for each house.

The house’s electrical needs are serviced by a 1 KW Solar Panel system. A cistern is provided to capture rain water which will be used for basic needs. The toilet is a self-composting unit. All Utilities are located in the central core in order to minimize plumbing and electrical conduit distances.

The house is lined with strips of openings on either side of the unit. One of the strips is positioned low in order to allow views from the interior to the exterior garden, while the other strip of ‘windows’ is positioned at the top of the wall to allow for the warmer air to circulate out of the structure. The openings have no glass, instead they are composed of sliding solid panels, mosquito nets, and decorative metal grills for security.

The structure of the house consists of 4”x 4”steel ‘H’ beams and columns; the skin is composed of Magnum Board panels. The structure is designed to withstand lateral forces both for wind and earthquake loads. The module is considered to be a rigid box which sits on a series of masonry walls. The walls conform to the topography, enclosing and defining exterior spaces.