The destruction wrought upon Southeast Asia by the tsunami of December 26, 2004, warranted innovative and safe reconstruction of homes for the more than one million displaced people and the overhaul of coastal communities throughout the region.

An important strategy for speeding reconstruction has been to design and build transitional housing using materials that can be repurposed for the construction of permanent housing.

In this housing design for a farm in Little Washington, Virginia, fragrant flowers in a greenhouse-cum-porch are watered by gray water from the unit’s sinks and help mask the odors from the farm’s poor septic facilities.

Shelter For Life, a nonprofit based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was founded in response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

The basic elements for life include access to water, sanitation, and shelter. All are encompassed in the Extreme Housing unit by Deborah Gans
and Matt Jelacic.

For years the architecture group TechnoCraft has explored the role designers can play in responding to crises by using innovative materials and low-tech construction.

Many crises leave behind large quantities of rubble, usually from homes and buildings destroyed by natural disaster or war.

Suzan Wines and Azin Valy’s firm, I-Beam Design, was only a year old when the team first experimented with the Pallet House.

emporary housing for displaced families was built on the outskirts of Kobe, but tent camps persisted because many people had jobs in the city center. Working with university students Ban built 21 temporary homes from paper tubes and plastic beer crates donated by Kirin.

The resulting unit is a 720-square-foot (67-sq.-m) prefabricated metal building with two bedrooms, each sleeping four men, separated by a living room, a communal bathroom, and kitchen. To date, seven units have been constructed on farms in Adams County.

Many NGOs have adopted a strategy of building “core housing” as a staple of reconstruction and development work.

In 1995 Khalili partnered with the UNDP and the UNHCR to apply his Mars research to providing emergency shelter for Iraqi refugees seeking safe harbor at the Baninajar camp in Khuzenstan, Iran.

Core housing in Azerbaijan designed by Relief International.

Fifty-eight paper tubes enclosed within a skin of corrugated polycarbonate sheeting form the structure of the Paper Church

Paper Log House foundations were built from beer crates, which are durable and not susceptible to water damage. Hiroyuki Hirai