Design of a post disaster temporary shelter unit

The Istanbul metropolitan area, with its 12 million populations, is accepted to be under risk of one or more earthquakes which will cause more than 600,000 victims to become homeless. In the context of preparations in the pre-disaster period, the research project “MobARCH” is set, aiming to develop a post-disaster temporary shelter system to overcome the temporary “homelessness” situation. The paper is focusing on the design and application of a temporary shelter unit. In designing the temporary shelter unit, the main goals can be listed as follows; taking user requirements under extraordinary circumstances into consideration, temporary and multiple use of the unit, achieving minimum negative environmental impact in all stages. A design process is tailored for this special case. Although the design process has a “methodological” approach, it is allowing “creative leaps”. The methodology of the design process is given together with its application on the temporary shelter unit design. The design process of the temporary shelter unit, comprises mainly three sub-processes; setting design objectives, developing design criteria and the “final” design, which are given in detail in the paper. As an output of the design process; the project of the unit and a prototype, which is manufactured, are also presented.