update

I have been working on this at various scales for the last couple weeks. (I’m not a disciplined blogger yet) nonetheless, I have been working on this project.  I have a few different designs for the residential barges, ranging from a very dense, somewhat institutional (corbu-inspired) barge, to a comical suburban parody.  I think I have decided to make each barge almost self-sustainable, for multiple reasons. One, it allows for more pleasant living situations, having necessities like kitchen, dinning and bathrooms all in relatively close proximity to your private bed area/room.  Two, when these barges aren’t being used for disaster relief, they could be used for hostels and/or homeless shelters and for these purposes, they probably wouldn’t be in a fleet of 40.  

 

I am experimenting with transformable density designs, some barges would have the ability to flex to allow more or less people.  I’ll scan some of my sketches and upload them soon. Speaking of density, I was thinking that a nice plan for the barge fleet would be to treat it like a little city and have a centralized bunch of barges with public functions (i.e. the office/business barge, medical clinic barge, music/social barges, as well as outdoor recreation barges). Then have the more densely populated barges closer to the public barges and progressively get less dense more family, spacious housing as they get farther away from the public sphere.  Any thoughts on this??

 

There are two (with variations of course) overall programmatic plans that I’m having a difficult time deciding between:

 

1)  When the big barge fleet arrives at
Cairo, it would drop everyone off with their belongings and they would live in some communal buildings as they help construct prefabricated houses that eventually would be loaded on to barges and shipped back down to their homes. The rescue barge fleet would reverse directions and immediately head back to evacuate more victims.

 

2) The Rescue barge fleet only makes one trip, it docks in Cairo and all of the evacuees live in the same places they lived in for the evacuation trip upriver (the arrangement of the barges could and would be different once they reach
Cairo). They could live in the barges while they work on building new houses.

 

3) a combination: multiple trips for the rescue barge fleet, but the evacuees on the last trip could live in the barges

 

I like the idea of having the docked barges be a temporary base home while the refugees construct new houses.  More of the same barges could be used down in the gulf to house volunteers that are cleaning and rebuilding the affected area.  

 

Other things that have inspired me recently:

Shaker villages, architecture and furniture- the simplicity and elegance of the designs are beautiful and so well crafted, also they were one of the most successful utopian communities in its prime, (too bad procreating was against the rules) so looking at the program and layout of the different buildings in their communities is helpful.

 

Life on an aircraft carrier- a precedent of a floating city

research

Every time I sit down to sketch some plans for the residential-dormitory barges, I have trouble varying from something that resembles LeCorbusier’s Armee du Salut, asile flottant, Paris, France (1929).  He designed a barge for the homeless population in Paris.  Here are some images of it: 

   

So I went back to the books to get inspired,  one particular article got me really thinking about the logistics of designing for a displaced population.  In the book, houses in Motion, Robert Kronenburg writes an entire chapter on Shelter after disaster.  Using some good examples, he points out that often the problem with many architectural disaster relief designs is “that their understanding is based on fundamental misconceptions related to their own experience and not that of the actual victims.”  In response to this, besides taking into consideration the advice of books dedicated to this subject, I would like to have a basic conceptual design done by the time I go down to New Orleans for the other studio’s fieldtrip so I can meet with some people that have actually lived through the disasters and have received help from some organizations, so that I can present my design to them and get some feedback.  Do you have any suggestions on people (experts or victims) that I could contact to set up a meeting with while I’m down there?  

Later in the chapter Kronenburg discusses that effective preparation is key to disaster relief and then he writes, “If the first documented disaster was the Flood, Noah’s remarkable act of disaster preparedness in building the Ark has yet to be repeated in as efficient of manner.” There are certain geographical areas that are predictably prone to natural disasters, New Orleans and the Gulf Coast has proven itself to be one of these.  I think that it is important to have these units stored on the gulf coast in various locations so they can be set up before the hurricane hits and either people can get on them and leave before the storm or immediately afterwards without waiting for help to arrive from other parts of the country.  Kronenburg states

 “When a disaster occurs, the immediate preoccupation of the population is to save life, then property.  Suitable shelter can play a major role in preventing further distress, illness and death if it is made available immediately. …On the ground, operatives who understand the local situation and the victims themselves are in the best position to decide the nature, numbers and location of the shelter requirements and also to undertake its erection. Thus logistical problems are tackled in the most immediate and efficient manner while also reducing the feelings of helplessness and despair that these people might otherwise experience. The shelter should be capable of supporting the efforts of the victims to rebuild their lives, economic and community activities, so its deployment should not divert resources from these areas.”

This makes me want to design two different types of barge fleets.  1—the original idea—for transportation of victims away from the disaster to a relief community and, 2, barges to stay in the damaged community as a base for rebuilding.   As for the original idea, Kronenburg writes about the design of disaster relief communities; he outlines the basic condition common to all refugees and how good design of the new environment is important, “not least in the provision of adequate shelter in a layout and organizational framework which they will find familiar.”  Most relief settlements are currently based on a military type layout “that puts expediency and perceived efficiency before sensitivity to the inhabitants’ social, cultural and historic living patterns” This is an inappropriate response, and Kronenburg quotes another good but more dry reading about disaster relief design, UNDRO’s publication, Shelter after Disaster.

Military organizations seek uniformity and conformity. This concern for order is simply too much to expect from a civilian population stricken by disaster. The period immediately after a disaster is a time when people need to get together and develop collective responses. A military hierarchy if decision-making inhibits this social process.”

I need to look up the work of Fred Cuny.  He has apparently focused on this issue of proper design of relief settlements.      

        “As soon as possible, the future inhabitants of the settlement should be involved in its design and erection.  They should be consulted in organized groups about the layout, which should be based on their previous communal, social and family groups; they should be involved in the allocation of dwellings and they should be able to erect their own shelter… The buildings should be appropriate investments for their purpose and lifespan, reusable and sufficiently portable in order to be transported by the refugees themselves in the eventual move to a permanent home” (Kronenburg)

Finally a spark!  Shortly after reading this, I looked up some information on the traditional shotgun houses of New Orleans, and the website I was looking at stated that the common lot width is 35’, the same width as the barges.  One of the design decisions I have been contemplating is how dense should I make the sleeping quarters, should there be private space, or should I try to pack in as many beds as possible to get the most people out?  I did the math, the river runs almost exactly 1000 miles from Cairo to the Gulf, so a barge-tow averaging 10mph (which is generous considering I found stats showing an average range of 6-11mph downstream) would take 4.16 twenty-four hour days to make the trip.  So realistically it would be about a week from New Orleans, upriver to Cairo.  A week could be considered a long time to spend on a boat, so I’d like to make the ride comfortable, but when you start thinking about leaving victims behind, a week is not that long to sleep in a room full of bunk beds.  

Back to the spark… I would like to fit a lot of people on the barges for the evacuation trip, and then design a customizable kit of parts home that the evacuees could assemble, live in for the time being and eventually when all is ready, load it on to a barge and float it back down to the Bayou.  Questions of course come up with funding, as this would obviously cost more initially, but it would be worth it because there would be almost no waste, as well as getting the evacuees started again with a permanent home that they invest their time and energy in, which helps with some of the emotional issues too.  I drew a little diagram:

Architecture for Humanity: Barge Aid

 

The inland waterway barge is one of our nation’s earliest modes of transporting goods and people. Le Corbusier designed the Salvation Army Barge in Paris as a shelter for homeless people. Other famous architectural barges include Aldo Rossi’s Teatro del Mundo and the Thames Barge by Louis I. Kahn. Barges are widely used today carrying 15% of U.S. freight while only consuming less than 2% of U.S. transportation cost. Not only do barges carry more cargo than either train or truck, but are more energy efficient in terms of number of miles per gallon of fuel.

 

Despite their tremendous potential, barges were not used to provide aid after Hurricane Katrina devastated the gulf coast in August of 2005. Thousands of people were left stranded without food, water or shelter, and hundreds of people died unnecessary deaths due to a lack in contingency planning. I propose a system of detachable dwelling units that can be stored and quickly assembled on barges to assist evacuation efforts as well as provide a place to live temporarily during the evacuation upriver to a planned relief community located on a floodplain next to Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. Barges could be used to transport thousands of tons of relief supplies to the disaster area.  Once there, the modular structures would be quickly and easily erected by the people that need to be taken to a relief community. The evacuees would then live on the barges for the trip upriver. The majority of barges in the evacuation fleet would contain residential units that could provide individuals and families with semi-private space and beds. In addition to these private barges, there would be community barges for gathering and recreation, as well as dining barges. The fleet would function as a floating community. Once the fleet arrives in Cairo, it would dock and the evacuees would help the volunteers already there to construct their longer-term temporary housing in the new community on the flood plain. Sustainable building practices would be a priority in designing the relief community in Cairo. FEMA trailer parks are laid out in a grid that has been proven ineffective. Cluster planning by family or neighborhood supports existing social networks, contributes to security and gives the inhabitants a sense of ownership and community. In Cairo, the barges would be refilled with more relief supplies and start the trip back downriver. 

This floating community of barges could be useful in providing relief to natural disasters all over the world, as the majority of natural disasters take place next to bodies of water. Barges are the most efficient means of transporting supplies to a disaster area, and they have yet to be utilized.  I am a founding member of the Architecture for Humanity Iowa Chapter and we will be working together to design and implement what I’ve discussed in this essay.

I’m planing on blogging twice a week, updating the world on the progress of my projects.