REFUGEE SKYSCRAPER - eVolo competition

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REFUGEE SKYSCRAPER - eVolo 2015 comeptition

submission by

Mohanned Iskanderani & Hani Shata
Published in "eVolo Magazine 3"

The objective of “Refugee Scraper” proposal is to address the refugee camps situation and status. Camps usually occupy a massive area on host countries soil which drain its infrastructure, utilities and raises many social and security concerns. What we tried to achieve in this proposal, is a vertical confide solution to the refugee camps. The tower is not only concerned with resolving the issue of size but also towards the health and safety of tenants. The Refugee scraper proposes a flexible affordable system that can be assembled anywhere in the world.

BOARD #1

The major component of the refugee scraper is the tensile structure which was designed to create a web system. The tensile is prefabbed, assembled and folded before it gets to the site. The system is created in a way that functions like an inverted umbrella and is easy to deliver and assemble once the steel structure is finished and set in place.

The steel cells will be pre-fabricated and assembled with a crane on site. The web system will only enclose the outside skin, and the inner faces “cells” will have the opportunity to merge, creating different space articulations and forms depending on the function and number of inhabitants. The outer skin will act as a toxic gas filter and protector from all natural threats like rain, wind and sun and in case of emergencies from smoke and chemical gases.

BOARD #2

The web system was designed to provide maximum flexibility and adaptability to be hosted on different surface, spaces and structures to provide damaged buildings with a safe enclosure to benefit from existing infrastructure and minimize the need to immigrate.

SMALL SCALE

The Zaatari refugee camp that is located in Jordan is being occupied with over 81,000 people as of July 2014. It’s about 1.3 sq mil. It was founded in 2012 after the Syrian crisis war. Its population started with 15,000 as of 2012 and grew more than four times as much in 2-3 years. With everything happening around the Middle East and most of the world, a new urban solution is needed to resolve the refugee camps crises.

BIG SCALE

The tower is made with a Weaire-Phelan structure. The entire tower has two different modular steel frames, dodecahedron and tetradecahedron. Both modules nest and tessellate together to create the Iconic massing of the tower. The chosen platonic solids aggregate horizontally and vertically to merge into The Refuge Skyscraper.

The below script shows the complexity happening in the algorithm that designed the skyscraper. The skyscraper had over 3,000 platonic solid faces that needed to be baked into Rhino and was impossible to do that all at once. The script had to be divided into segments to only bake some parts at a time until the full geometry was baked.

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