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Ikea Foundation Introduces Better Refugee Shelter
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.
I have a whole household full of IKEA products that have served me well for years, I see no reason why the same couldn't apply to these shelters too.
San Francisco has 8,000 homeless people. Those could help.
I have a whole household full of IKEA products that have served me well for years, I see no reason why the same couldn't apply to these shelters too.
The difference, of course, is your Ikea furniture isn't exposed to the elements. A 3 year lifespan for a temporary shelter isn't bad...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
According to http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IKEA Ike does indeed have a none profit foundation, like Microsoft, Google and Ford.
But ikea itself is very much a For Profit Dutch Corporation.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
While any incremental advances in design are a good thing, it seems like the timescales we are talking about here are starting to get into 'perhaps you need to re-think your approach to the problem...' territory.
12 years is really pushing the idea of 'temporary' to the limit. How long do you go before you stop trying to incrementally decrease the squalor in a given refugee camp and start to admit that either you need to get your shit together on whatever is keeping your refugee camp full, or you need to admit that you have no resolution in sight on that one, and admit that your refugee camp is now a town.
The British have been making them since the 18th century for export all over their empire. Quite a few are still in use.
http://miniatures.about.com/od/scaleminiatures/ig/Corrugated-Iron-House/Moody-Gosset-House-Front-View.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_tabernacle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prefabricated_building
No sig today...
I have worked in disaster response operations as a logistics and procurement person for six years, including rapid onset refugee settlements. Though I haven't worked directly in camp management, I have worked with purchasing, transporting and setting up these types of tents before. It doesn't say in this article, but other sources point out that even at mass production, the IKEA shelter will cost about twice as much as a canvas tent. At the end of the day, if you're setting up a tent city for 20,000 displaced refugees, that's a difference between 10 and 20 million dollars. Any large aid organization or donor simply isn't going to be able to justify doubling its operation costs. I should also add that one of the selling points of the IKEA structure is that tents only last six months, while these will last years. I don't know how long the UNHCR tents were designed for, but I think it's safe to say that in virtually every settlement I have been to, those tents tend to last longer than six months...alot longer. Usually, the tents are up for multiple years at a time, sometimes reused. This is not a justification for their crappy construction or poor amenities, but I have seen canvas tents that have been one place for six years, so the argument that the IKEA shelters is more economical in the long run isn't grounded in reality. Link to outside info: http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2013/06/27/196356373/new-kind-of-ikea-hack-flat-packs-head-to-refugee-camps?ft=1&f=1004
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.
I know, right!
I heard that back where those refugees came from there are loads of free bullets. Why can't they eat them?! You don't even have bend down to pick them up, they're flying right around in the air at head height!!
But I guess that's not good enough for them. That's why they're coming over here into the middle of desert, stealing our barren landscape.
So selfish.
Excuse me while I go buy a new iPad.
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