Picking up the pieces : transitional shelters for disaster relief in the northern mountainous regions of Pakistan

Abstract

This thesis seeks to tackle a complex problem - disaster housing relief - from the angle of architecture design discipline and attempts to find a logical approach to solve such a problem via an in depth examination of a specific topic - transitional shelter. The project addresses three main issues in the field of shelter design: 1) the need of transitional shelters in a particular disaster situation (the October 8, 2005 Pakistan earthquake), 2) the design criteria for the shelters in this specific setting and a systematic way of evaluating shelter designs, and 3) a specific transitional shelter design that is produced using the established methodology.