Folded Bamboo + Paper House / Ming Tang

Our friends at Inhabitat tipped us on this amazing project, the Folded Bamboo Houses + Paper House by Ming Tang. This structures were conceived as a response to the 7.9 earthquake that strucked China last May. 

In order to relocate the people that lost their houses, the Chinese goverment decided to build 1.5 million temporary homes. For this, Ming Tang proposed a shelter that was easily produced, cheap and environmentally friendly, using bamboo. The concept utilizes a system of bamboo poles that are pre-assembled into rigid geometric shapes. The geometry of these forms provides each structure’s integrity, allowing a range of lightweight modular structures to be quickly assembled in factories and transported to their destination. Once constructed, the shelters are then covered by using post and pre-consumer recycled paper.

For this modular system, Tang also proposed a  paper fibers, water, and cement envelope that allows for larger configurations.

This project was presented on the RE:Construct competition, a call for a ideas on temporary housing. This project was selected as a notable entry, but i think it should have been awarded since it address a on going problem with a local solution in an innovative way.

This are the kind of projects that I wish were being built right now! What do you think? Do you have more examples on innovative temporary housing?

More pictures after the break.