IKEA, designing a better home for refugee children.
26/06/2013.
ONG y activismo.
metalocus, PEDRO NAVARRO
metalocus, PEDRO NAVARRO
On World Refugee Day, the IKEA Foundation is celebrating its unique partnership with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and Refugee Housing Unit—a partnership to design and build a better home for refugee families.
The tents the UN usually provides refugees start to disintegrate after six months. The new Ikea-designed shelters are built to last 10 times that long. Click above to see larger image.
They take about four hours to assemble, and come just like your Ikea bookcase.
They’re twice as large as an old-school refugee tent, at 17.5 square meters (fitting five people comfortably). Ikea and UNHCR will beta test the shelters in Ethiopia next month, then iterate to a final design for mass production. Click above to see larger image.
The shelters are made from lightweight, Porta-Potty-style plastic mounted on a supersteel skeleton.
Many of the shelters currently used in refugee camps often have a life span of as little as six months before the impact of sun, rain and wind means they need to be replaced. However, refugees usually stay in camps for several years.
The prototype of the shelter is now being tested in a refugee camp in Ethiopia. The refugee families who would be making the shelter their homes will have a direct say in how the product is developed, putting their experience at the heart of this collaborative process.
Once UNHCR has gathered input from the families testing the shelter, the team will look at how they can make necessary changes and, hopefully, begin producing the new shelters.
The IKEA Foundation is also funding UNHCR’s search for other innovations, such as solar street lights, that will improve the lives of refugee families. ikeafoundation.org
Working with Refugee Housing and the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR ), the IKEA Foundation funds the development and manufacturing of a new modular shelter to be used in refugee camps.
