In March 2012 took place the competition “outside the box, Low and High Technologies for the Emergencies”. The theme of the competition was the exploitation of parametric design to achieve sustainability design during emergencies. The brief stressed the term “challenge” as in the architectural practice parametric design is synonymous of excess, complexity, shape prominence. New technological tools have in fact multiplied the architect’s possibilities, allowing the design and evaluation of structures so complex that, in the past, have been in the reach of few genius minds.
When I took this research path to develop a “worldwide container”, I was happy to testify how this technologies are not only about blobs, but most of all about efficiency and reconfigurability. During this process, I assessed the failure of a input-output system: the object I was trying to design was an architecture without place or a product without a real market, therefor there was no real base to create a definition of such an object, plus every system of this kind completely exclude people from the construction by definition, which every NGO consider as the greatest and the first strength after an emergency. The only way to turn a failure into a success was to exploit this technology bringing on board people, varying the system of the shelter according not only the climate, but the contribution that refugees could give to the rebuilding process after emergency. That’s how Open Source Emergency Shelter was born.
