Studio D: Temporary Habitat

We're keeping the shedlike emergency shelter theme going every day this week (for previous entries on this theme click here), starting with Temporary Habitat, a conceptual design from Studio D. Here's what they say:

"Whether by war or natural disaster, when thousands of homeless people need reliable, cheap, portable shelter, temporary emergency structures may provide simple, easily assembled and biodegradable solutions. In addition to putting a roof over a person's head, this emergency shelter provides storage for some personal belongings, some privacy, and a clearly delineated sense of personal place for each user."

Inflatable shed

We've covered various emergency shelter shedlike structures here on Shedworking over the last couple of years and here's a particular interesting one, the Life Cube from California-based The Inflatable World (not as yet a very exciting web site). Made of bouncy castle-type plastic, it's only four foot tall so better for providing immediate shelter for disaster areas than longterm shedworking.
Via Wired blog. Thanks to Jay Nigrelli for the alert

Metaplate

Continuing our week looking at emergency shelters on the Sheds for Everyone theme (see Monday's post for more details), here is Metaplate from Yong Sze Yuen Kelvin, a modular emergency shelter design which is expandable and can incorporate piping and drainage.

Reaction Housing: emergency shedworking

We've covered various emergency shelters on Shedworking over the past couple of years and here's the latest intriguing shedlike atmsophere, the Reaction Housing System. The kit can be put up super quickly (there's a neat little timer on the web site indicating just how quickly) which the makers claim "offers an unparalleled, rapid response housing solution whether it is responding to the aftermath of an earthquake, wildfire, hurricane or man made event". The basic unit is large enough for a family of four to live and sleep in temporarily and requires no expertise to set up:

"An Exo shelter unit is transported in two pieces – a base (floor) and an upper shell (walls and roof). At a deployment site, the bases are unloaded first and placed where the completed Exos are to be located. Workers then lower the upper shells down onto the bases until they lock into place. A small team of 4 people can easily move and assemble a single Exo shelter unit in well under two minutes with no tools or machinery needed."

Via inhabitat
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday's posts are sponsored by garden2office, the Swedish garden office specialists.Click here for more details.

Room-Room

A marvellously inventive habitat minimum et mobile pour situations d’urgence as designers Encore heureux put it, a mobile emergency shelter project for The NAMOC (National Art Museum of China) exhibition to commemorate the earthquake in Sichuan. This is what the designers say about it:

"We looked for what we more need in critical moments the existence: when we are without roof, without place of residence, excluded from the society. We wished to imagine an “ally” to accompany the people who reconstruct and remain with dignity."

I wonder how much potential there is in a mobile garden office along similar lines? Just pick it up and move it to another area of the garden when you want a different perspective on things?Lots more photos of how it all works at their site and at the daily mustread designboom.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday's posts are sponsored by The Garden Room Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here.

A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees

Clare Dudman, awardwinning writer and friend of Shedworking, has a new novel out - A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees - which features the shedworkingesque Welsh structure, the Ty Unnos. She writes for shedworking about its importance in the book which centres on the Welsh colonisation of Patagonia:

The Ty Unnos is famous in Welsh folklore. One of my ancestors was born in one. They were hastily-assembled, somewhat squalid places. The parts were often prefabricated and hidden around the village in readiness for rapid assembly. Although called a house (Ty means house, Unnos means one night), shed might be a more accurate term, but people were born and died in them.

It was thought that a house built overnight on common land, if it had smoke coming up through the chimney by six in the morning, then the house, and the land dictated by how far a man could throw a hammer from the front door, belonged to the builder. It is a romantic idea (although it is debatable if these shacks were ever truly legal) and one of these structures is an important feature of my book.

Enclosure acts allowed absentee English landlords to clear the land, and a house thrown up overnight could just as easily be pulled down again by the men of an absentee landlord. The landlords were often English and the tenants were Welsh. The only thing these dispossessed and desperately poor evicted tenants could do was to migrate: sometimes to the nearest big city, or sometimes, if they were brave, foolish or idealistic enough, to the ends of the world: Patagonia. And this is exactly what the characters in my novel did.

There, they found themselves in the windswept desert with little shelter. The only materials available to them was the wood used to make their bunks on ship, so they transported it ashore and built another Ty Unnos. Luckily, it turned out that in Patagonia, this emergency shed didn't have to last a life-time.

You can buy the book here and find out more about it at the micro-site here.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Wednesday posts are sponsored by The Garden Room Company®, the UK's premier supplier of garden offices and garden rooms. Click here.

Garden offices and studios at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2020

The RHS has just announced what kind of shedbased action will be on view at the Chelsea Flower Show next year which is focusing on the environment, sustainability, and the climate emergency, but not it has to be said on garden offices which at this stage are sadly lacking. That said, here's our rundown of what is on offer in the show gardens (of course there will be plenty of shed action in the other stands and we'll do a rundown on those nearer the time).

Above is the Zen Garden (designed by Kazuyuki Ishihara and sponsored by Glion) with a garden house built in collaboration with Japanese architect Kengo Kuma who designed the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Stadium. Below is Bicester Village Shopping's garden (designed by Nikki Tibbles and built by The Outdoor Room). It has a rather attractive wooden pergola made from reclaimed sea groyne.

The Finnish Soul Garden, pictured below, (designed by Taina Suonio built by Conquest Creative Spaces and sponsored by no less than the  Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland) features a sauna with a cool-off.

Here is Miaofu's Garden which will put a tearoom centre stage (designed by Miaofu Designing and Research Institute, built by G K Wilson Landscape Services and Miaofu Ecological Construction Co Ltd, sponsored by MiaoFu Holdings Co Ltd).

And finally,  Trailfinders’ 50th Anniversary Garden with a timber shelter inspired by Nepalese architecture (designed by Jonathan Snow , built by Stewart Landscape Construction).

--------------------------------------

Wednesday’s posts are sponsored by Norwegian Log Buildings  - Log cabins and garden buildings for a better quality of life. Click here for more details.