Designing folded modular houses as refugee shelters at disaster sites

Indonesia is a country that is often hit by earthquakes. Badan Meteorologi, Klimatologi dan Geofisika (BMKG) recorded 8,264 earthquakes in 2020, 10,519 earthquakes in 2021 and 10,792 earthquakes in 2022. This makes Indonesia the second most earthquake-prone country in the world. The need for temporary housing for refugees during a disaster is a challenge to build community resilience. This paper describes the process of designing a modular house that is intended as an emergency shelter in a disaster evacuation site. The requirements for this house are that the capacity is for 1-2 people, it is safe from the weather, light weight and easy to mobilize, sturdy, easy to assemble even by just 1-2 people, relatively free of maintenance, and environmentally friendly. The selection of appropriate and environmentally friendly materials and earthquake resistant building designs are the main keys of the design. Using an experimental method, a folding method was designed to allows the house to be folded into a box that can fit into a truck so that it can easily mobilized to the disaster area. The frame of this building uses mild steel which is assembled with hinges. To ensure that this modular house is easy to carry to the site, the wall material needs to be made light. For this reason, the team conducted experiments using cloth material coated with resin and woven bamboo for ventilation so that air could flow inside the house. Currently this research is still in the prototype study stage before entering the industrial design feasibility study stage.