Relief Shelters
Brynn Horley, Jeff Izbister, Rob Lee, Allen Schiedel, Danielle Sernoskie

Through our research into relief shelters we discovered that, not only can these shelters range greatly in size but they can also vary widely in many other significantly different ways: what conditions they are best suited to, the time taken to assemble them, their length of use, how well they protect from the exterior environment, and many more.For the purposes of this project we have divided our search between emergency shelters and relief shelters. In short; emergency shelters provide quick refuge from a potentially harmful or undesirable situation or from the effects of the exterior environment while relief shelters provide long-term to permanent shelter for people who have lived through a devastating experience which has compromised their prior dwelling.Within this topic we found ourselves re-evaluating what a 'shelter' is. Relief shelters can range from something as simple as placing a newspaper over your head to protect yourself from the exterior environment to something as elaborate as a new wood frame house which is to become part of a new community redevelopment. Everyone would probably agree that a house is a shelter and, depending on its size, a small building but what of the newspaper: assuming it also provides shelter. Is it a small building? Who decides? Is there a correct answer?