It has been a while since we announced the five winners of the WDCD Refugee Challenge, but that doesn’t mean that nothing happened. The accelerator phase is well under way and AGRIshelter was recently the first project to be tested with a prototype. Both a technical success and ‘a wonderful social experience’, according to initiator of the project, Italian-Iranian designer Narges Mofarahian.
AGRIshelter is a solution for the shortage of refugee shelters that considers social, urban, environmental and economic factors. It is built of biodegradable, zero-km materials, which are durable, provide good insulation and are readily available in every city. The whole 35-m2 unit can be erected in a few hours by people with minimum skills. It’s also easy to demolish.
The prefabricated wooden-frame foundation supports walls made of straw bales and wooden door and window frames. The roof is made of folded canvas. A cistern on the north side collects water. AGRIshelters can be built on vacant urban sites to prevent the formation of ghettoes on the edges of cities.
3 x 3 meter prototype
Earlier this month a small 3 x 3 meter prototype of an AGRIshelter was built in Abbiategrasso near Milan as part of a Politecnico-workshop on self-building. With a team of six students (two Indians, two Chinese, two Italians) and four newly arrived refugees from Africa (Mola from Gambia, Adama and Karim from Mali, Ballo from Ivory Coast) the shelter was built in one day and a half. Apart from Mofarahian, the architects Michelle Ricci and Giovanna Nardini form Archética studio and professor Richard Ingersoll of the Polytechnic University of Milan were also involved.
‘This was my first experience working with straw bales,’ says Mofarahian. ‘So this was a great chance for me to learn more about technical details and getting better understanding of the characteristics of building with this material, resulting in some changes in the structure and process of the building.
In this prototype we didn’t use any prefabricated component. The aim was to learn about the technical issues for self-construction of a shelter built with straw bales, as well as the social issues related to it, which is an important part of the concept. In the next prototype we aim to focus more on prefabrication issues.’
Social experience
‘Apart from that, it was such a wonderful social experience,’ Mofarahian continues. ‘We made friendships and I could see everyone having fun while building the house together. Students and refugees both found it very easy to work with the straw bales, and they contributed to the design by small interventions. They all liked the result and our friends from Africa said they would actually like to live in it and asked us to involve them in the building of the next prototype.
‘There was also interest from the local community, with neighbours visiting the site and afterwards asking us to come back and give them more information about the project. What is also great to see, is that most of the participants are now connected on social networks. And to top it all, we even have learnt some Chinese from our team members from China!’