architecture thesis homeless

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Home > Theses and Dissertations > Theses > All Theses > 715

Structures Serving the Visibly Homeless: An Emergency Shelter Response in Charleston, South Carolina

Ellen Martin , Clemson University Follow

Date of Award

Document type, degree name.

Master of Architecture (MArch)

Legacy Department

Architecture

Committee Chair/Advisor

Allison, David J.

Committee Member

Erdman , Jori

Detrich , David

Oka , Yukari

This thesis is an architectural exploration into how to partially address the housing crisis affecting the visibly homeless population of Charleston, South Carolina. Thousands of men, women, and children in the United States are homeless in Charleston there is a significant and increasing number of visibly homeless. Those who sleep outside shelters are generally known as the 'visibly homeless' or street homeless. The visibly homeless is the most underserved group within the entire homeless population and is composed of those who sleep in places not intended for human habitation, such as bus stations, subway trains, automobiles, doorways, and abandoned buildings. These individuals exist at the threshold of meeting their basic physiological needs such as warmth, food, clothing, security and shelter. Shelter as a necessity rather than as a negotiated commodity is the reality of a homeless person. Shelter that strives to satisfy basic physiological, social, safety, and self-esteem needs and utilizes affordable construction strategies can best support the visibly homeless in Charleston. The issues and complexities of homelessness and mental health will drive this thesis investigation. An architecture is proposed to meet the basic needs of Charleston's most exposed and critical population--the visibly homeless. This thesis first identifies homelessness as a housing emergency and examines the causes and effects of homelessness. This visibly homeless population is very difficult to obtain an accurate count or profile, but through informal personal interviews with the test population, greater insight was gained about their living situation and resultant mental stability. Secondly, this thesis examines the hierarchy of needs, formulated by Abraham Maslow. This hierarchy identifies the needs that we as a civilization must satisfy to survive and that require fulfillment to become the individuals we are all capable of becoming. Research also examined Oscar Newman's defensible space principles, which attempt to deter crime through the physical environment. Crime deterrence is essential when addressing the visibly homeless--a population who is vulnerable and regularly victimized. Lastly, this thesis explores the relief efforts offered for those who have suddenly become homeless due to natural causes and compares those to the efforts taken to those who are homeless due to a complex set of circumstances, some innate and some contracted. The design principles and strategies employed in the creation of relief housing for the victims of the Kosovo war were examined and adapted. Housing relief efforts should be responsive to homelessness with the same level of urgency and intensity as those measures taken with victims of natural disasters. This research led to the formation of design principles that can appropriately accommodate the housing needs of the visibly homeless in Charleston. Structures serving the visibly homeless must respond to personal selection of site whenever applicable and appropriate. The siting of these structures and the dwelling units themselves must provide defensible space through territoriality and surveillance opportunities that support personal space. These structures must also allow for universal and flexible living which support personalization and varying levels of privacy. Lastly, structures serving the homeless must utilize affordable construction methods, materials, and labor which respond to the limited financial resources available to the homeless and their supportive organizations. These design principles will aid in the creation of an architectural response. The test site for this thesis has been self-designated by the local homeless population itself, as it is in close proximity to the existing homeless shelter. The residents of the site have chosen to, or have been forced, to live outside the existing shelter, but still require the services provided by the shelter including mental health counseling, food services, and medical attention. This urban campground is designed as a supplement and as an alternative to the traditional shelter model existing in Charleston. The strategy of this thesis is to create shelter that supports well-being and mental health through spaces that accommodate basic needs and create defensible space.

Recommended Citation

Martin, Ellen, "Structures Serving the Visibly Homeless: An Emergency Shelter Response in Charleston, South Carolina" (2009). All Theses . 715. https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/715

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Architecture and Homelessness: What Approaches Have We Seen?

• Written by Yiling Shen
• Published on August 15, 2018

In the last global survey undertaken by the United Nations in 2005, there were an estimated 100 million people who were homeless around the world and 1.6 billion who lived without adequate housing. This number has escalated in recent years; unaffordable housing has become a global norm, making it increasingly difficult for the disadvantaged to seek out permanent, or even temporary shelter.

As housing becomes a means of accumulating wealth rather than fulfilling its fundamental goal of shelter, well-intentioned architects have attempted to solve the homelessness crisis through creative ideas and innovative design. But is architecture really the solution?

The causes of homelessness are complex and play into a number of structural factors and individual circumstances. In the large cities of first-world countries, we often see an animosity towards the homeless, a mentality that “they chose this lifestyle,” or misconceptions that homelessness is a result of laziness or lack of responsibility. However, it is an unavoidable fact that with the wealth of first-world countries, homelessness should not be the global issue that it is today. In Melbourne , Australia , 82,724 properties sit vacant as of 2015; a perverse number when we consider the hundreds sleeping rough on the streets and tens of thousands in temporary shelters . The lack of social housing while empty luxury apartments are used as investment properties presents a merciless image of an economic market that favours profit over liveability and governments that sweep the issue under the rug.

Architecture has often gone hand in hand with a sense of social responsibility and desire to improve society through the built environment. Although it is impossible for the issue of homelessness to be “solved” by architecture alone, a reluctance to engage with and design for this issue would represent a failure to interact with the issues of the city and its inhabitants.

Below we explore some interesting concepts for short-term solutions, as well as some ways in which cities are dealing with the problem on a more fundamental level.

Proposals for Temporary Solutions

These proposals focus on short-term solutions for the homeless, from emergency shelters to “hostile architecture" that attempts to push the problem elsewhere.

Emergency Shelters

Emergency shelters allow the homeless to be shielded by the elements and have a safe place to stay for a few nights, but the demand for homeless shelters completely outstrips supply. Many permanent emergency shelters are also designed poorly, having more in common with a prison or hospital than a friendly place to stay. Many emphasise their use as temporary accommodation, which does not resolve the emotions of anxiety and instability associated with homelessness.

In Brussels , canvas tents are banned on the streets as camping is not allowed. The ORIG-GAMI project , conceived by Xavier Van der Stappen, uses foldable cardboard tents to create a temporary solution for those sleeping on the streets. The cardboard is donated by a cardboard factory and its origami foldability allows users to transport them easily while seeking shelter.

Another similar design is the WheelLY Recycled Homeless Shelter by Italian firm Zo-Loft, which consists of a wheel-shaped aluminium frame that can expand into a tent. Its rollable design makes it easy to transport, with a cloth bag holding up to 250 pounds of personal items inside. The side of the wheel can also be used as space for advertising, to reduce cost. It can be expanded half-open to act as a chair, or fully open for sleeping.

“Parasitic” Housing

Many designs for homeless shelters explore the idea of “parasitic” architecture that latches onto existing structures, an attempt to solve the issue of funding.

Michael Rakowitz’s project “ paraSITE ”, which was exhibited at MoMA in 2005, consists of inflatable homeless shelters that could be attached to an existing building’s exterior vents. The warm air that would exit the vents of the building would then heat up and inflate the parasitic structure. These inflatable shelters were constructed and given to over 30 homeless people in New York , Boston and Cambridge .

The idea has also been explored in many conceptual projects, such as “Homes for the Homeless” by James Furzer of Spatial Design Architects . The project is a series of pods that can be attached to ideally government-owned sites or connected to form a community of structures. Built from affordable materials, the exterior material can also match that of its host building. Furzer is currently developing the design with a private investor to explore the feasibility of the project’s construction and distribution.

New York based Framlab presented a similar scheme just this year. The scheme , which seeks to utilize the unused space found on blank sidewalls of buildings in New York City, would make use of a proprietary 3D printed hexagonal module. It also draws on local history, referencing the city's single occupancy housing that was common in the mid 20th century.

The idea of “parasitic” housing has also been used heavily in French architect Stephane Malka ’s work, filling in the gap between buildings and above rooftops with affordable housing. His project A-KAMP47 constructed a series of camouflage-print tents on the side of a factory wall in Marseille . It acts a critique to the state’s false promises for universal housing, the camouflage print representing society’s desire to hide the homeless from view.

Hostile Architecture

A temporary “solution” used by many cities is the construction of hostile architecture , such as sprinklers or supports in the middle of park benches to deter the homeless. More aggressive examples include anti-homeless spikes outside buildings and under bridges, an attempt to push the problem out of view and out of mind. There is little research to suggest that this is a succesful long-term approach.

A similar, but non-architectural response to the issue of homelessness are one-way bus tickets, used by many US cities. The Guardian covered it in-depth here , finding that 21,400 homeless people were bussed to rural areas in the last 6 years with an agreement to not return. Although some benefited from these “homeless relocation” programs, many were simply faced with the same problems in a different location, with fewer job opportunities and support services.

Proposals for Long-Term Solutions

These proposals explore more long-term solutions to create permanent residences for the homeless.

Tiny Houses

The recent interest in tiny houses offers a possible solution to homelessness. Many charities are developing solutions involving tiny houses, with the Tiny Homes Foundation in Australia developing a pilot program of 4-6 tiny homes with a common space offering amenities and welfare services.

Another interesting phenomenon is the existence of tiny home villages . The outskirts of Portland, Oregon hold a tiny house village called Dignity Village. Unlike other homeless programs, Dignity Village formed organically and is governed and run by its residents. City and community support in the 2000s allowed Dignity Village to evolve from a tent community to a heated tiny home village with facilities. The key aspect that ensures the success of communities such as Dignity Village is the creation of a framework in which the residents feel like they have support and a relationship with their neighbours.

Tiny houses allow the resident to construct the house themselves, meaning that it can also act as a preventative solution to homelessness, creating the possibly of affordable housing that people can build themselves.

Social Housing

The funding and development of more social housing is crucial in ameliorating the issue of homelessness. In Finland , rates of homelessness have gone down by 35% since 2010, while rates have steadily risen in the rest of Europe and the developed world. This decline is a result of the Housing First scheme, which works by the philosophy that a permanent home is the first step, before subsequently tackling issues of family breakdown or substance abuse that led to the loss of housing. All the emergency shelters of Finland were transformed into permanent accommodation, and with the building of more housing blocks, the scheme created 6000 new housing units for the homeless. This proved to be much more cost-effective in the long-term compared to short-term solutions.

Although more social housing is essential, the development of good social housing is also necessary. A possible reason why Housing First has worked so well compared to other social housing developments is that it is not relying simply on building more houses but also ensuring that they are attached to various support services. Local government support is crucial in its funding and its residents can receive relevant financial and housing advice.

Indeed, the recent collaboration between Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan the Skid Row Housing Trust hints towards what is possible. The recently completed Crest Housing is a stunning project that provides not just living units for homeless veterans but also ample space for social and community programs.

If we analyse the differences between successful social housing and the projects that fail, it becomes clear that although good design is crucial—the elimination of stigmatised, monotonous towers of beige—what is possibly more important is a collaboration with governments and charities to create housing that is socially supported and community-oriented.  

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Sheltering Those in Need: Architects Confront Homelessness | (2015) Introductory Essay for the 2016 Berkeley Prize

This essay was written as the Introduction and Call for the 2016 Berkeley Prize on the Social Art of Architecture; an annual essay prize for undergraduate students sponsored by the College of Architecture and Environmental Design (http://www.berkeleyprize.org/). The essay considers architectural interventions in designing shelter for the 100 million people on the globe without a roof, trapped in the liminal zone between street and home. While Mass Housing is certainly the long-term structural solution, to which architects have long given much attention, much less attention has been directed to the basic questions of temporary shelter, camps, and street interventions. Considering the lack of political will to provide such housing alongside the rapid growth in the global houseless population over the past 20 years, even amidst the overall drop in global poverty rates, points to an urgent need for architectural responses to provide more comfort, safety, and stability than the pavement to the increasingly permanent emergency faced by the precarious, floating, and stateless factions of society.

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The population of people living in temporary settlements after disasters is in the millions and the stay in these settlements commonly exceeds a decade. This paper reviews the literature on the design of post-disaster relief shelters in order to: establish the state of the art, identify trends and describe the academic activity of the past forty years. The analysis demonstrates that the academic engagement in this topic is limited, with fewer than sixty publications in the past four decades. Displacement camps are often situated in countries with extreme climates; however the issue of the thermal performance of shelters and their impact on health is found to be further overlooked. In an attempt to rebalance this situation, thermal surveys were conducted in two refugee camps in Jordan. The study found that the refugees were very unsatisfied with the thermal conditions in their shelters, particularly in summer. Internal surface temperatures of 46°C were recorded in September and indoor CO 2 concentration levels of 2700 ppm were measured in winter. In addition, the study reported on the adaptation strategies used by refugees to cope with the heat and cold, and on their views on shelter design considerations and satisfaction.

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Homelessness is a persistent social issue in communities around the world. The work of assisting marginalized populations, including homeless persons, must extend beyond drafting policy documents and churning individuals through institutionalized support systems. One way to help persons exit homelessness is to design better buildings that provide temporary accommodations while also aiding in coping with trauma, facilitating the provision of social support services and affecting positively users’ sense of well-being (Rivin and Moore 2001). Emergency shelters are generally defined as places to which persons can go to get off the street, receive food, access personal care amenities, and receive non-emergency medical treatment and counselling. Many existing shelters, however, fail to offer these services in ways that dignify their clients (Wasserman and Clair 2009), making them options of last resort. In this mixed-methods study, I use historic analysis, space syntax tools and qualitative data assessments to explore two case studies to assess the implications of different spatial typologies, defined by visual and physical accessibility, configuration of navigational pathways, and intelligibility (Hillier 2007), on the potential of buildings to support individual dignity and psychological well-being among users. The findings detail the relative merits of two arrangements—(1) the traditional workhouse model, which relies on segregation, control of movement, surveillance, and disorientation to manage habitant populations; and (2) the trauma-informed model, which deploys attributes of communal housing to increase the sense of agency and self-respect experienced by lodgers and staff—to inform the decision-making of designers, stakeholders, and support personnel in their efforts to de-marginalize and empower individual clients.

Design Philosophy Papers, 2005

" Homelessness " is the most intense stage in terms of " lack of adequate housing ". Considering the scale and soaring figures it reached following refugee migration(s), homelessness is not an exceptional status anymore. Accordingly, it would be mistaken to define it as " a problem ". It is the new layout and we have to change the conventional approach by which we appraise homelessness. While each validated document and regulation for " housing rights " internationally and nationally is essential, they are far from being ample enough given the new regime of homelessness contributed by the scale and the impact of the refugee population. This paper argues that " right to shelter " for each human being on earth should be discussed and established in an extended scope. The boundaries of the " Right to Adequate Housing " hence need to be thoroughly criticized in terms of " law versus right " approach in order to expand the public opinion and act. Considering the political meaning of language for the architectural profession, the conceptualizations as " housing crisis " and " housing problem " will be objected in favour of the word " right ". Consequently, a critic against the architectural language will be introduced via the " Europe in Africa " project.

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The active role of homeless citizens in Germany. The case of the Initiative Bauen Wohnen Arbeiten in Cologne. Countless organizations are working in the homeless sector; nevertheless, Germany has 1.2 million citizens living this reality every day. Solutions normally range from emergency charity services to quick-fixes, such as temporary accommodation. This thesis work was based on 1) recognizing housing as a human right and the starting point for ending homelessness, not the ending goal; and 2) that permanent fixes can only be achieved by practicing a human-centered approach and including "experts by experience" (people with lived homelessness experience) as active actors in the development of solutions. When facing a systemic issue as it is homelessness, there is a need for interventions at multiple levels from individually-focused solutions to large-scale social policies. Thus, the outcome of this thesis contemplated on the first hand, the construction of the IBWA model easy to replicate, based on the Initiative Bauen Wohnen Arbeiten in Cologne. And last but not least, a set of Principles developed by and with the "Self-representation of homeless people" to guide the collaboration hand by hand between service providers, policymakers and homeless citizens. Vanessa Espinosa Ureta Master of Arts Integrated Design www.espinosaureta.com

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Home > CACM > Architecture > BArch > 204

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Sheltered city: a prevention for homelessness through sheltered designs.

Kena Fairfax Follow

Date of Submission

Spring 5-9-2022

Degree Type

Undergraduate Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Architecture

Architecture

Committee Chair/First Advisor

Bronne Dytoc

Secondary Advisor

“Nothing but stable housing fundamentally differentiates those who experience homelessness and those who don’t, and all people deserve the human right to housing (pg. 1),” quoted by the National Health Care of the Homeless Council, can serve as a driving influence in developing solutions to address homelessness. The poignant experience that homeless people shared and described serve as an inspiration to better these individuals’ lives. As a substitute, approaching homelessness in a political or financial position, this thesis is to provide solutions to shelters architecturally.

Delving into precedents, each are separated into four categories such as singular, community, group, and reutilize that assists in generating this thesis proposal. Taking a moment to examine shelters architecturally will make a vast change in city development. Most homeless shelters are overcrowded and neglected. These precedents offer innovative ways to improve shelters today by studying their best and worst attributes. Exploring diverse environments and dense homeless populations, this led to picking two sites, Atlanta, Georgia and New York City, New York. Studying each site vertically and horizontally varying on location and building form aids in creating new building concepts.

To summarize, this thesis proposes a solution to provide modular pods that are positioned around these cities to reduce homelessness. Researching elements of different city types of housing and several already existing shelters prompted the creation of the modular pods as the best solution. The different types of pods introduce an incentive that individuals can work towards and eventually get integrated back into society. The modular pods intend to provide temporary housing for individuals such as veterans, people with disabilities and low-income families. Furthering the project will – depending on the city include adding shelters, revitalizing entire neighborhoods, empty spaces and abandoned buildings. Individuals building their own singular pods will gain personal growth and feeling of ownership, while the communities are encouraged to build their pods together for a chance of community growth.

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Home > Colleges, Schools, and Departments > School of Architecture > School of Architecture Dissertations and Theses > Senior Theses > 453

Architecture Senior Theses

A School Design: for homeless children in NYC

Author(s)/Creator(s)

Tingjie Zhou , Syracuse University Follow

Document Type

Thesis, Senior

Spring 2019

homeless children, NYC, architecture, Oklahoma city school, whirlpool care counts program

• Disciplines

Architecture

Description/Abstract

By the end of 2017, more than fifteen thousand homeless families with over twenty-three thousand children lived in shelters in New York City (Coalition for the homeless, Facts About Homelessness). Receiving education in a school, a daily activity for school age children, can easily become an unachievable thing for homeless children. Though many programs and acts are carried out to help these children, their educational situation is still severe.

Noticing the circumstance that homeless children are facing, I’m interested in the role that architecture can play in responding to homeless children’s educational concerns. When looking at the schools with high percentage of homeless children, it’s notable that most of these schools have family shelters nearby. Considering this as a point of departure, this thesis seeks to address the challenges of providing a quality education for homeless children broadening its architectural scope to the surrounding community.

In terms of the social and technical complexity of school design for homeless children, my inquiry is applying an evidence-based and data- driven design method to school design. The data relevant to this thesis will include social data on homeless children’s education concerns and technical data on building environment. Led by the collected data and the hypotheses based on evidence, the school design proposal aims at discovering opportunities to improve the quality of education and retain homeless children in school. Meanwhile, the process of the school design proposal will be complied into a textual and graphic documentation, which can serve as a design methodology reference for designers, architects and students.

Additional Information

Thesis Advisors:

Brian Lonsway

Terrance Goode

Recommended Citation

Zhou, Tingjie, "A School Design: for homeless children in NYC" (2019). Architecture Senior Theses . 453. https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_theses/453

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