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Ikea Foundation Introduces Better Refugee Shelter

Posted by Unknown on from the where-is-allen-wrench-b17 dept.

Lasrick writes "This is truly brilliant: Ikea has joined with the UN Refugee Agency to design a longer lasting flatpack shelter that includes a solar panel and UV reflecting material." From the article: "Ikea's design, a cross between a giant garden shed and a khaki canvas marquee, is formed from lightweight laminated panels that clip on to a simple frame, providing UV protection and thermal insulation. Like an Ikea product, the polymer panels come packed in a box, along with a bag of pipes, connectors and wires – and no doubt a cartoon construction manual." And they last for around three years.

5 of 163 comments (clear)

  1. Makes sense by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The video said the average family will be in these tents for ten years, while the durability of these tents is 3 years (up from 6 months from the old tents). That sounded odd to me until I realized I've been living for 6 years with Ikea furniture which felt like it would last two months.

    Good on Ikea. Though I wish they had said what crazy swedish name they were going to call these things.

  2. We need those here by Animats · · Score: 4, Interesting

    San Francisco has 8,000 homeless people. Those could help.

  3. Re:Why not the Hexayurt? by icebike · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Hard to pack in boxes, and they make inefficient use of limited land, that's my guess.
    Might also be harder to assemble.

    Since Ikea Already uses one percent of all the processed wood in the world, i suspect they also know that other designs are more resource demanding.

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  4. Sounds terrible... by evilviper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Six months sounds good enough, to me. That's longer than I would want to live in a temporary shelter. Much longer and you're not so much providing humanitarian aid, as you are shipping-in prefabricated houses for many thousands of people.

    Those six months should be ample time to put together enough clay/adobe bricks to build a real, semi-permanent structure, with ample insulation, firebox, etc. Roofing materials might be more difficult, but helping to source those is better than giving out housing you've deemed "acceptable"...

    After 6 months, you should be building-up an economy... Paying some of those local refugees (a truly tiny amount of) money, to construct real homes for their fellow refugees, and hopefully even a few commercial structures.

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    1. Re:Sounds terrible... by Dyne09 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The idea of a refugee settlement utilizing relatively permanent building materials can and does occur, however it's often the case that host governments simply refuse to allow that to happen. A shelter using permanent materials quickly becomes a small town, which lends legitimacy to refugee settlements. Some host governments want mobile tent cities so they can be moved every year or so, or at the very least broken down quickly once what what ever situation is causing the resentment crisis in the first place is resolved. That said, the types of things you're describing tend to happen organically over time, especially with refugee situations that drag on for years. It only makes sense for a number of obvious reasons.