Algorithmic design and evaluation of emergency shelters

ABSTRACT

Humanitarian architecture as a domain of architecture that deals with people in need and has peculiar characteristics in regards to what and how does the architect design. In the last three decades, there have been major developments in the architectural techniques that are currently not adopted with their full potential by the humanitarian sector. The aim of the research presented in this paper was to develop new methods for shelter design that have integrated automation of various tasks and leave others to the professionals. The developed algorithm for semi-automated design is used to make shelter study models that are presented here. The research critically addresses the widely accepted design standard for shelter height and area and proposes an alternative approach for shelter evaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Shelter design
• shelter simulation
• humanitarian architecture

Acknowledgements

The work presented in this paper was supported and funded by ABC PhD department of Politecnico di Milano.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).