The COVID-19 pandemic has shown yet again how designers are needed to reimagine emergency shelters. With an estimated 900 million people around the world to remain at home because of the virus, there are also a number of hospitals without the necessary beds to treat infected patients. At the same time, the need for emergency shelters is tied to many types of crisis, not just this virus or a pandemic.

Carlo Ratti Associati with Italo Rota developed CURA (Connected Units for Respiratory Ailments), a series of plug-in Intensive-Care Pods for the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an effort to aid the plight of refugees around the world fleeing war and persecution, two young architects in 2016 embarked on a project designed to improve the mental health of refugees in camps.

Lucas Boyd and Chad Greenlee from the Yale School of Architecture came up with proposal designs on churches, synagogues and mosques that can be quickly built as “Pop-Up Places of Worship” in refugee camps.

As Katherine Allen stated back in 2013, some 1 million people poured out of Syria to escape a civil conflict that had been raging for over two years.

Following the most costly earthquake in their history, hundreds of thousands of Nepalese residents were rendered instantly homeless. To help these people reorganize and get back to a familiar way of life, Barberio Colella ARC designed a temporary structure using local materials “to make a house that can be built quickly, lightweight and compactly, durably and economically.”

SheltAir, a pavilion developed and designed by Gregory Quinn as part of his doctoral thesis at the Berlin University of the Arts is, as its name suggests, a shelter constructed with the help of air: a meticulously devised system comprising an elastic gridshell and pneumatic falsework in the form of air-filled cushions.

Via ArchDaily.

Sarah Buckley

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