Emergency Architecture for Social and Economic Development: a State of the Art

The last decades are characterized by faster and much more intense changes than ever. The climate changes year after year, as technologies and human habits do. Migratory flows and social changes happen so rapidly and intensely that we usually realize them when they are already progressing. Environmental catastrophes force the re-forming of entire cities and regions, forcing high human and economic costs. Cities and buildings do not keep up with these changes and they simply, best case scenario, limit the damages. All the changes, which are either positive or negative, must be put at the centre of the debate, otherwise, if not under control, they may become a problem hard to handle. Starting from this framework, at the Laboratory of Building Design of the University of Trento a research is ongoing considering the identification of some principal themes of the modern living: Sustainability, Mobility, Invisibility in order to define a new design approach for emergency constructions, mainly based on local resources and adaptable to different contexts, with low environmental impacts and following a C2C design procedure. In this paper, the first step of the research is presented, consisting in an analysis of the state of the art in the field of emergency architecture (from temporary buildings such as tents and containers to more stable ones), focusing on the main critical aspects with particular reference to adaptability to local contexts and to environmental issues such as energy saving, water treatment, waste harvesting and recycling, self-production of energy and food. In conclusion, some key targets are defined to transform emergency architecture from a mere occasional intervention to an opportunity for social and economic development.