Will McLeod

adome - adome is an emergency shelter designed to utilize local materials to provide long term shelter to disaster victims and refugees.

Introduction - The brief required a shelter that was for at least short term relief; to provide food, water, and shelter. However, during research it became apparent the a truly effective shelter had to go above and beyond. Refugee camps frequently become long term residences and often need to sustain far more people then originally designed for. Further, Maslow's Hierarchy of Need suggested that a community could strive for higher level needs once basics were met. We made it our goal to reach higher.

Inspiration - While most initial ideation focused on cutting material cost, and the cost of transporting (shipping) materials to a disaster site, divergent brainstorming led us to the idea of using only locally available resources long term. The idea was to inflate a bladder like a balloon, then plaster over it with concrete or mud, then remove the balloon for reuse, leaving a hollow dome structure.

Concept - With an inflatable mold, it is possible to ship only the bare minimum supplies required to inflate it. Locally available resources can be used to build each structure, leaving the mold to be REUSED to create whole villages that can be expanded as the community grows. Further, structural considerations such as ribs, shims ans supports, can be molded right in.

Features - Other basic considerations can also be molded directly in. This example illustrates the use of a collecting basin molded in at the top to feed through a series of internal tubes to a gravity fed water filter. This can help provide and sustain clean drinking water for residents. Another consideration was a refrigerating system that doesn't require electricity.