Hexagonal Temporary Shelter

There are many ways to lose a home. Multiple major wars rage around the globe, leaving behind a specter of death and destruction. Tornados, earthquakes, and the wrath of nature can tear apart our lives in the blink of an eye. Some lose it all from bad financial decisions, from circumstances outside their control, and from decisions made before they were even born.

The right to a home, shelter, and a proper life is an essential right that many unfortunately lack due to these conditions. Numerous innocent refugees who have been forced to flee their homes, often with little warning. These refugees need to be housed, sheltered, and sometimes given medical treatment, yet refugee camps remain overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded.

There is no easy solution to this problem, but I have designed a shelter which may take one step on the long path to fixing this issue. The hexagonal shelter is designed as a modular foldable shelter, which can be folded and transported to any area of need or packed up and removed in case of danger. Solar panels provide electricity and rainwater collection provides freshwater help make the shelter as self-sufficient as possible, reducing costs to the host community.

Autodesk Fusion 360 (any 3D modeling software could be used)

Blender (for better rendering, although Fusion 360 can also be used to render)

A computer

Paper and sticky notes for ideation

My inspiration for the hexagon design was the strategy game Civilization 6, where in that game numerous hexagons are combined together to maximize space. To fulfill the part about the shelter being temporary, I thought of a prefab/foldable house which could be opened and folded as needed, which I prefer to tents because it can transition into a permanent residence.

First, I tried to create a concept board, which had all of the main issues I wanted to address, and the technology/requirements needed to make the shelter.

I also designed a prioritization grid, where various features were brainstormed to add to the design, and then ranked on the board based on user design and viability (pictures to view this in are in the above section).

Finally, I designed a visualization sketch to get an idea of what I wanted the model to look like before starting to model it. There are multiple differences between this and the final design, but the same general idea is used.

I started the process of modeling with making a base house as a component, which could then be duplicated, stacked, and filled with furniture as needed.

1. I first started with a hexagonal base sketch.
2. I extruded up walls on the sides.
3. I then cut into these walls to create windows.
4. Finally, I added a roof and textured everything.

1. I copied and pasted the components, using the paste new function to allow myself to make edits to the houses.
2. I extruded the roof up with a taper, which will be useful during rain to make sure the water doesn't gather on the roof and collapse it.
3. I jointed each component with each other at the end to make sure they were exactly joined.

1. I made a sketch with two rectangular patterns perpendicular to each other to create a solar panel like effect.
2. The rainwater collection buckets on the top started as a rectangular prism. I used a bunch of sketches and fillets to get the desired shape.
3. This water storage is a cylinder that has the ends filleted and a hatch/viewing port was modeled onto it.
4. The pipes connecting the parts are cylinders created using the sweep tool.

I added modeled furniture, textured the floors, and added doors. These were nice finishing touches to the design that really brought it to life.

1. My chairs were pretty basic, just modeled from a few extruded rectangular prisms.
2. The bed was created using create form and T-Splines.
3. The cabinets were a combination of extrusions an fillets.
4. The toilets/sink were created by create form.
5. The doors are jointed with a revolve joint so they actually swing, although there are no hinges actually on there due to time constraints.
6. There are ladders from holes in the floors, which allows for easy access between the first and second floors.

I rendered the model in blender, utilizing the .fbx file format which made the conversion convenient. I used the cycles engine to make the glass have realistic results.

The site of these hexagons could vary. The modular design means it should be able to be modified to fit the environment as needed.

Ideally these would be constructed form parts that are shipped/driven to the site. Each wall and the floors would be a separate part. They could be pushed up into a hexagon position and then screwed together.

As an alternative, each hexagon could just remain as a separate part without disassembly and these hexagons could be shipped individually and assembled together. This would have the benefit of making the house stronger but would be less space efficient when transporting (like a container).

Either way, furniture can be put into the design and rainwater systems can be installed along with it. With this type of prefab house, there would probably not be piping systems so the bathroom created isn't really practical and it is more for show/proof of concept. A more permanent installation might be able to utilize it, and that could be good for integrating refugees into the wider community.

Model (May take a few seconds to load):

Some potential improvements include:

1. Having doors on the inside of the house as right now they are just open windows. I couldn't figure out a workaround that didn't sacrifice modularity.
2. Figure out a plumbing system. Right now, the toilets and sink modeled inside the design would not work, since there is no plumbing modeled.
3. For some reason, when I tried to tilt the rainwater collection system the joints didn't work properly. Ideally these would be tilted so water would actually flow down the pipes.
4. Right now, the method to get up and down the house is via ladders, which is not something I would want to do. A more convenient solution would be stairs however they would be impractical in the small hexagon space.

Despite all of the potential improvements that could be made to this design, I am still happy with how it turned out. Thank you for reading!