Yasmeen Lari founded the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan in 1980 to preserve the country’s traditional architecture, and they have built some 85,000 structures for displaced Pakistanis, including victims of last year’s devastating monsoon rains. That disaster left a third of the country underwater and destroyed more than 2.1 million homes, but the thousands of bamboo … Read more
I recently received this message from Patti Stouter, who has been a long time advocate and experimenter with earthbags and other natural technologies, especially as a means for surviving earthquakes and other calamities: I am beginning a test shelter project of straw wattle that may be helpful in both Ukraine and Turkey, so this report … Read more
Refugee shelters are being developed in northern Kenya as part of an ambitious project by UN-habitat and the Voluntary Architects’ Network to realize four dwelling types dubbed ‘the Turkana houses’ for a pilot neighborhood. These shelters will house refugees who, because of perpetual conflict and civil war, can not return to their homes in Sudan. … Read more
A Cold War–era missile silo base in Eskridge, KS on 32 acres was converted into an underground home and has come on the market. It was built as an Atlas E missile structure in the early 1950s and was operated by the Air Force in the early 1960s, but was decommissioned in 1965 in favor … Read more
I just found this YouTube channel called Survival Shelter Ideas that has some amazing videos like the one posted below. The channel itself has very little information about who is actually doing the work, but it appears to be an Asian couple in their 30’s (although she looks much younger in this video. Their interests … Read more
Under the guidance of the German master-builder Jörg Stamm, folks at Bamboo U, a build and design course in Bali, have created a bamboo yurt which can fold like an umbrella and be deployed in an instant. The yurt’s frame is made from bamboo of the Phyllostachys species, referred to in Bali as Bambu Jajang. … Read more