BASIC IDEA

To design a cheap, safe, demountable basic, but "real" house that can be built up in a short time by volunteers and future owners.



BACKGROUND

This project was designed for a competition, planned by the organisation "Un techo para mi País" (UTPMP: http://untechoparamipais.org). UTPMP bulids emergency houses for poor people in nine latin-american countries, even on occupied ground and with a budget of 700$ per house. When we started the design workshop at university, the competition wasn´t launched and in the end it didn´t take place.
The competition´s exigencies were:

- budget: 700$

- minimal space: one room of 20m²

- mountable in 2 days by inexperienced, guided helpers

- demountable (concerning families being expelled from the occupied ground)

- earthquakeresistance in some regions



DESIGN

Based on the fact that bricks are very cheap, widespread and locally produced in most latin-american countries on the one hand and the competition´s requirement of demountability on the other hand, we tried to work with pre-stressing instead of mortar. The walls are made of perforated bricks, tensioned between foundation and ring beam made of precast conrete elements. For pre-stressing we used a system of the packaging industry that is normally used to secure heavy goods: Sintetic fiber strips, stressed with a hand operated tightener. These strips can hold up to 50kN, depending on the width and are quiet cheap as well.



HELP

This design is not yet finished. We did some experiments on the wall constructive system and it seems to work. Also the roof isn´t yet decided, but we worked out diferent posibilities, depending on the climate.

I am looking for a partner who could help me building a prototyp.