Recycled Pallet House - Disaster Relief Housing

Posted on July 7, 2008 by Matt Embrey in Architecture, Concept+Design

Over 400,000 people were left homeless by the flooding in Sri Lanka. Massive amounts of people are being displaced by natural disasters or regional conflicts every year so the demand for temporary shelters is huge. The challenge is to come up with something that is more sturdy and inviting than a tent but still practical considering the limited resource available in most situations. Another consideration that is not usually at the forefront of emergency shelter design is the impact on the environment. The Pallet house design by Azin Valy and Suzan Wines of I-Beam Design is an innovative approach that satisfies all of these considerations.

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The idea of reusing shipping pallets as a building material was originally developed by I-Beam for a Transitional Housing contest aimed at housing refugees in Kosovo.

The competition guidelines defined transitional housing as that which bridges the gap between temporary tent shelter and permanent home. They stipulated that the house last about five years, the time it takes a Kosovar family to rebuild a typical stone house.

Pallets are great material for this application because they are sturdy, inexpensive and readily available. In most cases in a disaster relief effort many of the pallets will arrive as part of the transpiration of food and materials requiring no additional logistics to procure them. If more are needed I-Beam states that they can be built by hand at a rate of 500-600 pallets per day. One transitional shelter measuring 10′ x 20′ would take 80 pallets to build and cost approximately $500.

As a basic structure the pallet houses can be easily assembled and disassembled, but these pallet house not only serve as temporary houses, but can also be the framework for more permanent housing. A huge benefit that these have over other transitional housing is that they can be individually configured to a families needs. Then by adding installation, vapor barriers, plaster, plywood… these can be turned into permanent houses allowing for a more organic re-growth of these villages and communities. The picture below is a picture of an unrelated project where a shed was build from pallets but it can give you an idea of how nicely they can be finished off.

By utilizing materials that are already in abundance this design idea limits the amount of resources needed for the relief effort. The US Forest Service and the National Wood Pallet & Container Association estimate that 1,900,000,000 timber pallets are in use in the US at a given time; 10%, or 1,900,000 timber pallets, end up in landfills; another 10% are ground up for mulch. In the ideal situation these temporary houses would be transitioned into permanent structures, however if disassembled the scrap can easily be recycled into other building materials, fuel or mulch.

I-Beam Design has built a number of prototypes for display, but the most interesting example so far is the workshop they did at Ball State University in Muncie, India. At the workshop 35 students and 4 professors built were split into 6 teams and designed and built 6 houses in 4 days.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Clean Up

Sources:

Tags:

Architecture, building

24 Responses to “ Recycled Pallet House - Disaster Relief Housing ”

tpahornet

07. Jul, 2008

Very cool! Being from the area but living in FL it is great to see my college taking some very positive action.

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Matt Heating

11. Jul, 2008

Great to see this proactive response to the needs of millions.

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The Pittsburgh Rare | Pittsburgh Real Estate

18. Jul, 2008

What a creative concept. It’s not only serving the immediate needs of people in the midst of a disaster but it can become permanent housing and lessens the impact on the environment. Well done!

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Architects

25. Jul, 2008

a great idea - it’s really nice to see attention being given to the less-privileged among us.

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Gerry

11. Dec, 2008

Great idea to re-use but some pallets are treated with fire proofing chemicals!

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Sites linking to this post:

Pallet House Solution for Millions Left Homeless By Disaster « From China Earthquake to all Disaster Relief

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[...] read more | digg story [...]

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[...] linkage: via green upgrader [...]

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[...] Recycled Pallet House for Disaster Relief Housing [...]

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[...] remembered this little anecdote when I read about making temporary housing out of pallets: Pallets are great material for this application because they are sturdy, inexpensive and readily [...]

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[...] a disaster situation survival is the primary need, speed to build trumps all other requirements. These little houses are a wonderful example of how a little design and care can result in a very usable and aesthetic [...]

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[...] Article found on green blog Green Updater [...]

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Amazing idea for inexpensive and quick housing. : Windermere - Andrew Stone

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[...] One 10′ x 20′ shelter would take about 80 pallets and $500 to build. To read more about this, check out the post over at greenupgrader.com. [...]

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Recycled Pallet Housing « an investigation of the worldwide development of cities, architecture, society, and everything else in between…

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HGTV Dream House

01. Mar, 2009

HGTV Dream House…

This was our kitty Cashmere right before we left. I had one last batch of laundry to do before we headed to Chicago. We had already took Baylee to the“ sitter” and I think Cashmere was livin’ it up while she had a dog- free house (a. k. a. not ha…

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Mightygodking.com » Post Topic » Linkdump Sunday

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[...] Recycled Pallet House Disaster Relief Housing greenUPGRADER Posted by root 22 hours ago (http://greenupgrader.com) The picture below is a picture of an unrelated project where a shed was build from pallets but it can give you pallet house solution for millions left homeless by disaster read more digg story reply to this comment 2008 greenupgrader all rights reserved p Discuss | Bury | News | recycled pallet house disaster relief housing greenupgrader [...]

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House made with pallets - New & Cool Architecture | Lost At E Minor: For creative people

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[...] a purpose. Designed by Azin Valy and Suzan Wines of I-Beam Design, the intention is for it to be used in disaster environments where there really is no other choice of resilient [...]

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