Over the past few days, the "grassy knoll" in front of HP hasbeen home to some odd structures. Constructed out of plain timberpallets using only hand tools, these buildings represent the latestphilosophical, economical and technological development intransitional refugee housing.
THE NEED
"If you get out in the world and do some traveling," associateprofessor of architecture Wes Janz said, "you'll see that there aresome amazing conditions right now." Istanbul, Turkey sees an influxof 10,000 new citizens every week, Janz said.
"That's relentless. And that's just one city of many that haveso many people moving in that the city government and thearchitects and the planners are just overwhelmed," Janz said. "Youcan't plan for the world in many of these exploding cities."
Because of these and other situations, including politicalrefugees returning to war-torn homelands, a need has risen forcheap, easy and efficient housing.
THE IDEA
In 1999, the New York architecture firm I-Beam, headed by AzinValy and Suzan Wines, entered the Architecture for Humanitycompetition to design transitional refugee housing prototypes.Their designs, which utilized common timber pallets, received anhonorable mention in the competition.
In Fall 2002, Janz and others from the College of Architectureand Planning created informal "squatter settlements" forUniverCity, a community celebration. Among the many structures inthe settlements was one built with timber pallets.
Recognizing the similarity in the work they were doing, Janz,through correspondence, persuaded Valy and Wines to sponsor aworkshop at Ball State where architecture students could designhousing using strictly timber pallets.
THE MATERIAL
"Timber pallets are something that is all around the world,"Janz said. "If you travel to any major city in almost any part ofthe world, you'll find them in great numbers."In the United Statesit's estimated by the [U.S.D.A.] Forest Service that there are 2billion pallets in circulation [in the United States] at any onetime," Janz said. "Ten percent of those probably get used once ...and then it might get chewed up into mulch, but about 200 million,it's estimated, go right into landfills."
Valy and Wines noticed that all of the aid being shipped todisaster relief areas was being shipped on timber pallets that area standard size of 40 inches by 48 inches."
"We could build permanent houses, they thought, using thosepallets in these kinds of human-made or natural disastersettings."
Using those materials in creative ways is part of the overalllearning process, instructor of architecture Tim Gray said."
This is a workshop that really is exploring the potential ofthese things as a building material," Gray said. "So we startedwith students trying to understand how they might connectvertically or horizontally, or ... what [pallets] could do, what[they] couldn't do, and then we sort of design within the spirit ofthat."
THE OTHER BENEFIT
"A lot of the the time when you're in the architecture buildingdesigning or studying on paper...you don't really have any feelingof what a space is actually going to feel like," fifth-yeararchitecture student Adriane McGillis said. Both McGillis and Janzstressed that one of the biggest benefits of the workshop wasgetting students out and involved in building projects, even simpleand low-budget ones.
Low budget can mean many things, one of which is that thedesigns of the buildings are limited by the free materials,fourth-year architecture student Chris Peli said.
In addition to getting real job site experience, students arealso becoming enthusiastic about building, assistant professor ofarchitecture Kevin Klinger said.
"There's a lot of energy. There's people from all over the yearlevels, and also alumni and faculty and visitors from out of town.So it's kind of hard to resist that enthusiasm," Klinger said.
Janz said he finds the enthusiasm encouraging.
"I'm just trying to get these young architects to understandthat they have options in their careers besides creating [a]gymnasium building," Janz said. "...maybe if they want to lead withtheir hearts ... they'll find ... people could benefit from anarchitect trying to help ... people have a slightly better place tolive."
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