The final group project undertaken in the an academic setting was to design a refugee shelter for The United Nations Refugee Agency to tackle the issue of rehousing families affected by the Syrian crises.

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This project was described as 'designing for challenging environments'. This meant that for the first time, we didn't have rules or regulations in terms of the building to stick by.

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The main area of concern for us was to create a shelter that could be airdropped into crises areas in the Middle East and Africa and understood and constructed by anyone who needs the shelter. This comes with a number of challenges such as finding a universal language that anyone can understand to allow them to construct it correctly. 

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The design that we came up with was a small shelter with a floor area of 9m² that could accommodate a family of 4-6 people. The walls, floor and roof were to be constructed of polycarbonate sheeting as it is lightweight and structural. 

Having researched other examples of shelters being used currently, the group ran through some concepts but landed on a design where the walls, floor and roof are pre-connected during manufacturing using hinges, this limit the amount of work required on site to construct it. By doing this we only required the refugees to tighten pre-attached brackets.