What I Learned Designing an Emergency Shelter for Syrian Refugees

This last year I had the privilege of working with a team of students focused on designing the most versatile and safest transitional emergency shelter for Syrian refugees.

We spent a total of about 9 months researching, designing, problem-solving, and ultimately constructing to arrive at our refugee shelter design. We constructed it out of lightweight galvanized steel beams, corrugated metal roofing, and structural cardboard. The structural cardboard was waterproofed and sealed through paint and other compounds.

While we were able to build a shelter for refugees and possibly further some ideas of shelter design, what I learned in the process was much more impactful.

We conducted months of research trying to understand the living conditions in refugee camps, specifically in the area of Greece. We determined sanitary needs, square footage needs, and community needs to ensure as comfortable of living as possible in the situation.

Our goal in choosing our specific shelter design was to construct something that seemed like a permanent structure. This methodology differs from some other shelter designs that simply focus on functionality, but we wanted to make sure that if a family were to live in our shelter, they would feel as at home as possible.

The building process was hard and due to the metal materials we were using, we got many cuts along the way. While we honed in our engineering skills in the construction process, we gained deeper insight into just how a refugee might live.

Being uprooted from your actual permanent home – for whatever reason – and being forced to live in an emergency shelter for oftentimes years, is no easy task. We had to step back many times in the design process and understand how an uprooted family might feel being greeted by our design as their new home.

Many other teams in the design process went with functionality and their designs might have held up slightly better from an engineering sense. What we realized – and what I learned – was that designing a shelter to meet physical needs is one thing, but if we fail to make our habitants feel safe and otherwise at home, is what we built really a shelter?

I think there's a tendency for those in the western world to disassociate humanity from refugees.

Engineering a shelter for potential future housing only gives you a slight taste to the conditions that refugees may live under on a daily basis.

I learned a great deal designing this shelter and ultimately researching the refugee crisis in Greece and elsewhere. I learned to be thankful that I have a solid roof over my head. I learned that "shelter" goes far further than simply being protected from the elements.

To truly provide shelter for these people, we would have to do much more than just build a structure...

In the end, our structure was destroyed (by choice) to see the maximum wind loading the building could take. But this didn't matter. The structure taught us more about what true shelter is than we ever could've thought. Our time furthering transitional shelter research is done, but it will surely continue though others. my hope is that as research continues, we strive further to provide "true" shelter to refugees far beyond a simple roof.

A picture of the final destroyed shelter along with some fun props for dramatic effect.