💬 Introduction We all need shelter—but not all shelters are designed equally. In this chapter, we zoom in on one of the most ancient human design responses: the construction of shelter. Using real examples from the REIFY seminar, this lesson explores how to design for dignity, resilience, modularity, and climate sensitivity. You’ll meet a mobile shelter inspired by ancient Roman water systems and learn how participants in Evia translated sustainability principles into functional, grounded architecture.
🌍 Design for Shelter: A Basic Human Right Shelters are more than structures. They are spaces for protection, restoration, and belonging. But in the face of climate catastrophe, rising housing prices, and forced migration, we must ask: What kind of shelters are we designing? For whom? And who gets left out?
In this lesson, we focus on how sustainable shelter design responds not only to physical needs, but also to social and environmental realities. From nomadic yurts to disaster-resilient pods, design becomes a form of care.
🧰 Tools, Materials & Design Process You’ll be introduced to passive water collection systems, vernacular materials like cob and stone, and design techniques that emphasize circularity. Through sketches and 3D visualizations, you’ll follow how a team reimagined a circular hut structure, integrating impluvium roof geometry with modular walls. This structure was designed to be mobile—addressing climate, economic, and humanitarian uncertainties.
Participants also engaged in early-stage ideation through observation and hand sketching. You’ll learn some quick sketching techniques to capture proportions and scale, and see how paper modeling helped test modularity and water flow.
🌿 The REIFY Shelter Prototypes One of the key outputs of the seminar was a design for a self-cooled, mobile shelter that collects rainwater and uses local materials. Another team created a second shelter design during the seminar—from paper sketches to 3D modeling—based on the needs of the sustainability space where the training was held.
We’ll show visual references of these prototypes, and walk through how participants explored the full cycle of designing: observing the environment, drafting by hand, modeling in SketchUp, and imagining potential implementation.
🌐 Why Modularity and Mobility Matter In times of ecological crisis, shelters need to move, adapt, and scale. Whether it’s for displaced populations or rapid response to disasters, mobility in shelter design is a feature—not a compromise. Modularity allows for personalization and repair, while small footprint design minimizes resource use.
🛠️ Activity: Observe + Sketch Choose a space or structure near you—your room, a kiosk, a hut. Observe it for 5 minutes. Then sketch its basic form in perspective. Try to:
Note any materials or systems that could be more sustainable
Identify its orientation (how does it relate to sun, wind, water?)
Sketch with basic lines and proportions
📚 Further Resources
- Architecture for Humanity: Design Like You Give a Damn
- UNHCR Emergency Handbook – Shelter
- SketchUp Free – 3D Modeling Tool
🌟 Final Thoughts Designing shelters is one of the oldest human practices—but today, it demands new thinking. In this chapter, you saw how youth can lead with ideas that are regenerative, inclusive, and mobile. Shelter isn’t just about walls. It’s about listening, adapting, and preparing for a future that is already here.