"These Old City"

Homelessness is a growing issue in many urban areas, caused by a whole host of factors ranging from natural disasters, urban migration or economic crises.

Climate science is complicated business, and understanding the extent to which climate change is man-made also requires an understanding of Earth's powerful natural cycles. One of those natural cycles involves Earth's orbit and its complicated dance with the sun.

And while many may ignore the problem in the hopes that it will just go away, many are choosing to combat it through activism, or small humanitarian efforts in designing portable shelters or even building tiny houses.

A team of architects volunteered their services to plan a new set of “bus shelters” for the city. One set of the buses, based on designs, will become hygiene units. Another set will hold four to eight beds, which can fold away so the bus can be used in other ways during the day.

The bus shelters should be fairly easy and cheap to build; the Department of Transportation will likely donate the buses, and local carpentry unions will donate labor. The challenge will be the hygiene buses, which are more expensive to convert, and may cost. Because the city would like to build the buses in pairs–one hygiene bus with one shelter bus–they’re working on securing funding for the shower buses now.

Old buses, will be transformed into mobile shelters where people can have a safe place to sleep. Buses will be stripped and renovated with recycled materials. Beds, storage shelving will be designed to be foldable and modular, so that the buses' interior spaces will be flexible and adaptable for both day and night.

So now, instead of just parts, these buses will be remade into urgently needed havens for the city's most vulnerable people, as a service that can supplement existing programs or shelters. These refurbished buses could also be adapted to other uses: mobile health clinics or garden and art mobiles, for example. The city wants to convert some of the buses into "hygiene buses" where people could also take showers. This is a more expensive option, costing about USD $100,000 per conversion, but if their goal to fund these buses is successful, the city hopes to pair one "shelter bus" with a "hygiene bus" for the plan's implementation. If all goes well, Honolulu officials also hope to create buses that could provide services for people with addictions, or mental illnesses, or who have pets.

...it's something that can bring a sense of dignity and security for people who need it most.

• In architecture school I was tired of drawing buildings that would never exist, for clients that were imaginary, and with details I didn’t fully understand. I prefer to work with my hands, exploring details thoroughly, and enjoy working/prototyping at full scale. So for my Masters Final Project I decided to buy a school bus and convert it into a tiny living space.