(RE)Covering Shelters: Enhancing Structural Design Pedagogy by Designing for Disaster Relief

“Shelter is Warm, Dry, and Noble.” – Samuel Mockbee“A great architect…is made by way of a cultivated, enriched heart”- Frank Lloyd WrightTraditionally, structural design pedagogy for architecture students is taught using an engineering-based system of abstract analysis and representation in which “design” refers to the analysis and sizing of elements—the courses reward the accuracy of elemental calculation over spatial conceptualization and typically avoid experimentation or engagement in any critical social issues, even when those issues might dramatically affect potential structural solutions. However, by engaging architecture students in a project with very specific constraints, such as those found in the creation of disaster relief shelters, a very particular set of design criteria emerge that are well-suited to be explored in a structural design course IF the classroom setting and pedagogical approach are also evolved accordingly. This paper will describe the results of a week long, intensive, project-based learning exercise completed by architecture students in the newly implemented, award-winning, undergraduate structural design course. Students were tasked with creating, “a structurally responsive shelter designed for rapid deployment (and re-use) which favors material optimization, sturdy performance (not just a tent) and an architectural intention for inhabitation.” This paper will discuss the important synergistic relationship between the specific pedagogical approach to used to teach the structures course, Think + Make + Break + Evaluate, and the fascinating, albeit complex, set of social and technical constraints created by this scope of exploration. Several examples of student work will be shown that resulted from the exercise including: experiments in pneumatics (for shelter and for thin-shell formwork), thin shell structures made from parametrically-modeled segments, configurable triangulated panels that create folded plate structures, and even more traditional unfolding flat-pack panels. There are profoundly unique social and technical benefits of integrating this scope of work into the structural design education of young architects. They learn to care and that architecture/structures can make a difference, but they learn that the relative efficacy of their design interventions are inextricably linked with their realistic engagement with a broad range of technical encumbrances such as the fabrication, deployment, and overall structural performance of the shelter—it is a meaningful design project with incredibly difficult design objectives. As a result, this portion of the module elicits both great enthusiasm and consternation from the students—but most importantly, it elicits a holistic engagement of broader design principles than is typically found in a structural design course.

Volume Editors
Anthony Abbate, Francis Lyn & Rosemary Kennedy

ISBN
978-0-935502-90-9