The prototype of the shelter is now being tested in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. The refugee families who would be making the shelter their homes will have a direct say in how the product is developed, putting their experience at the heart of this collaborative process. — ikeafoundation.org
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Refugees are exactly that "Not at home" If one makes the refugee to comfortable he becomes permanent and insist on being taken care of - City of Bam earthquake in Iran proved this - Years later people still lived in tents and fed by the UN
"If one makes the refugee to comfortable he becomes permanent and insist on being taken care of"
moladi, thats pretty narrow minded of you. what if thats their only resolve; what if their country really doesnt have the infrastructure, the means or even the will or desire to set up something more permanent? do you think refugees have much of a say? quite heartless of you ...and pretty mindless as well.
tammuz - You just attested Abraham Lincoln aphorism - "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. What planet you from Scotty? Europe ships their refugees back - they don't house them. Hahahaha...
a case of refugees who remain refugees and not because they "insist" to do so but rather because others insist that they remain so.
http://www.unrwa.org/etemplate.php?id=86
moladi, bravo. you managed to retort back with even less substance than your former post. what will your next post be like? a puddle of diahhrea?
hahaha Bored? Go take a walk puppy I don't waste my time with a narrow minded fool...
^ " a puddle of diahhrea" - you called it tammuz.
Did anyone watch the video? I wonder if it is really a huge improvement over what is presently available- how much "insulation" does a lightweight plastic panel really provide, and don't some tents have a two layered top which would provide shade in much the same way - also - the lifespan of the plastic panels is only 3 years - what happens to them then? I am interested to see how this product performs in testing.
Why is it that nobody seems to be able to come up with a good solution to temporary housing needs? (Other than the fact that the people with the money aren't willing to spend much of it on alleviating the suffering of their fellow man.)
There are many examples like this. One of the issues is that while the actual shelter is cheap the shipping costs too much. Lots of other problems make it very hard to solve housing for such camps . Most of the issues are political though. Not architecture at all.
The idea that tent city is so comfortable it is attracting people is nonsense. The opposite is more true. But they are still there. That reality is seriously disturbing.
I'm working on designing a Helpful Garden.
Introduction
The idea is to design a homeless shelter using Aquaponics to feed them as well as make money for them. Each place will have 9 to 13 (12x17) 204 sq ft building for living in. It will a fishery of 3 different kinds of fish, tiger shrimp &/or crawfish to clean the algae off the root of the plants that are in the aquaponic containers. There will at least 3 different apple and pears trees so to have them throughout the year as well as some citrus trees like lemons, oranges and 2 two others. Maybe even 2 fig trees. The homeless shelter will also have chickens and maybe even rabbits. So the "Helpful Garden" will be shelter to up to 13 people as well as a farmers market at which 10 - 20% of the sales of said food will be use to maintain the place and the other 80 - 90% of the money paid to the homeless. The one thing about homeless shelters is that one can be built every 80 miles about or so. I can see a minimum of 3000 homeless shelters of the "Helpful Garden" being built worldwide.
The refugee problem is huge and complex and it will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. There is not going to be any one "magic bullet" that will solve it. There needs to be a wide range of political and technical solutions. One area of technical solutions is to provide basic, semi permanent shelter that can be shipped in quickly at relatively low cost. The shelter also needs to be something that can be stockpiled in warehouses around the world so that when disaster strikes the shelters can be in place quickly. I think this shelter is one brilliant solution. When they have the bugs worked out, I look forward to seeing them in place. With Ikea's global supply chain, I hope that they will target production of the shelters in countries where there is a refugee problem as part of the economical solution to the refugee issue.
I have also worked with Shelter Box. This is a Rotary sponsored initiative that provides a tent shelter, cooking utensils, etc as a complete shelter for a family into disaster areas. It would be great if Ikea worked with organizations like this to provide a shelter PLUS other basic necessities.
Kudos to Ikea for this work.
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