A home away from home

Better Shelter is a modular housing concept developed by the Ikea Foundation and Unhcr - the UN agency for refugees - in four years of intense research, to create a “home away from home” for refugees and internally displaced people. Its design pays special attention to transport volume, weight, price, safety, health and comfort. One shelter, made of modular thermoformed plastic panels, can be assembled by four persons in roughly four hours and the house can be disassembled and reused when needed. The expected lifespan is three years, six times more than the traditional textile tents used until now in refugee camps.

The Beazley Design Awards recognise every year the most original and exciting designs from around the world in six different categories: architecture, digital, fashion, graphics, products and transport. Nominations for the award must promote or deliver change, capture the spirit of the year, enable accessibility and have a developed and innovative design. Each year one of the category winners is awarded the overall Grand Prize - and Better Shelter emergency shelter was the big winner in the ninth Beazley Designs of the Year awards, taking home both the Architecture award and the 2017 Grand Prize. Better Shelter, say the British judges is a clear example of how design can make an impact on people’s lives.

”We are incredibly proud to be bringing home both the Beazley Designs of the Year Award for architecture and this year’s Grand Prize - especially in a year with such intense competition”, says Johan Karlsson, initiator and interim managing director of Better Shelter.

A smart, humanitarian emergency housing concept

There are currently 30,000 shelters in use around the world, installed in refugee camps managed by international agencies such as Unhcr, the Red Cross, Unicef and MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières). The shelters have been so far used with different functions: temporary housing, health care clinic, classrooms, administration and registration centres. The first camps have been installed in 2015 in Greece and Macedonia, for the refugees from the Syrian war, and in Nepal to provide a first emergency housing and health care solution after a major earthquake.

A modular design, a simple installation

The house is composed of three individual parts: a metal frame, several thermoformed plastic panels for roof and walls, and a photo voltaic (PV) system that provides energy for several hours to the supplied LED light or - very important today - to recharge a mobile phone or use any USB device.

All components can be assembled on site without additional tools or equipment and its modular structure is self-standing without guy ropes. These shelters have a roof, walls with windows as well as a lockable door, providing residents with a higher level of safety, privacy and dignity than those of conventional tents: in comparison with these, shelters are larger, higher, better insulated against light and cold weather.

Cannon provides full solution and support for the project

The wall and roof elements have been produced for Better Shelter by the plastics processing specialist Safeman  a Swedish company based in Olofström. These modular panels are made with a special semi-expanded thermoplastic foam, using an innovative, fully automatic thermoforming plant made by Cannon Ergos in cooperation with Nortec Cannon, the Danish arm of the Cannon Group operating in Scandinavia for more than 45 years.

Two fully-automatic thermoformers, in combination with four robots used for the part handling, produce the different types of panels working in accordance to a Zero-Trim concept: each thermoformer quickly produces in a single operation a fully-finished panel that only requires, after forming, a simple punching to cut the small holes that host the plastic buttons designed for the assembly of the shelter.

Cannon is proud of having contributed to the project: with the supply of a complete solution - from the technological concept to the production plant, including tooling and the prototyping service for more than 1,000 moulded panels - Cannon Ergos confirmed once more their mission of one-stop-shop supplier of complex moulding plants.