Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Ansal University Partners With ARCHADE Foundation to Create Shelter Prototype for Victims of Uttarakhand and Odisha Natural Disasters

NEW DELHI and GURGAON, India, October 25, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

Low Cost, Easy to Construct Using Local Resources, Expandable and Reusable Prototype to be Shared With NGOs, Government Bodies and Individuals in the Regions

India's leading architecture institute, Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Ansal University, Gurgaon commenced its Silver Jubilee year activities by partnering with ARCHADE Foundation (Architecture Research Conservation Habitat and Design Education), a non-profit organization of architects, town planners and architecture students, to create an immediate, easy to construct and affordable shelter prototype for victims of the recent natural disasters in Uttarakhand and Odisha. The single room prototype is the result of a series of architectural design workshops and competitions attended by over 200 professional architects and architectural firms alongwith over 500 architecture students from 7-10 leading institutions in and around Delhi. It is a sustainable, expandable model with recycling of materials and uses a substantial amount of local resources, thus, aiming to bring sizeable employment to the local people. It can also be quickly replicated in varied sizes and can be easily multiplied in various combinations to create clusters. The sustainable model with its simplicity of design and construction details allows local users to build such structures by themselves with a minimal dependence on external technical support. The prototype is being shared with NGOs like Seeds India and habitat for Humanity, government bodies like BMTPC and individuals working in shelter creation on site in the affected regions.

According to Dr. CS Nagpal, Vice-Chancellor, Ansal University, Gurgaon, "The recent natural disasters in Uttarakhand and Odisha have rendered millions homeless and created an urgent requirement for shelters for a large population in the shortest possible time. Ansal University is proud to be at the helm of such a laudable initiative reaching out to the Architecture fraternity for providing socially relevant and viable solutions for disaster relief management."

The affected districts in Uttarakhand come under extreme cold winter region with vulnerability to earthquakes (zone 4-5), landslides, heavy winds, snowfall and flash floods during the months of monsoon. In Odisha, however, due to completely different climatic and geographical condition there are different set of constraints that need to be addressed while designing an intermediate shelter. Keeping in mind these differences, the Uttarakhand shelter is constructed of stone for foundation, earth bags (empty cement bags filled with loose earth) in walls tied with coir ropes or reinforced with barbed wires, timber poles or bamboo to provide vertical, horizontal and diagonal support as well as for rafters and purlins for roofing. Cement stabilized earth plaster on chicken mesh and hessian cloth along with GI corrugated sheet for roofing with insulation from the bottom alongwith wooden door/window frame and shutters with tarpaulin covering outer walls (optional) are the other construction materials. In contrast, the section for Odisha's cyclone affected has stabilized sun dried/burnt bricks/stones as foundation. Thinner walls made up of split bamboo screens are used. The GI corrugated sheet for roofing has insulation from the top. The optimum size of the prototype shelter is 15' x 12' covered area.

According to Dr. Rupinder Singh, Dean, Sushant School of Art and Architecture, "It is our 25^th year of existence as a premier architectural institution and through the shelter prototype creation we've aspired to use our knowledge and skills to create a memorable social initiative aiming at the rehabilitation of people in adverse climatic circumstances. Some of our students and faculty have also visited the Uttarakhand region to get a first-hand experience of the areas of concern before working on architectural solutions."

According to Mr. Mohit Verma, Founder, ARCHADE, "ARCHADE came into being through the collective social consciousness of members of the architecture fraternity following the recent Uttarakhand disaster and we hope to contribute meaningfully towards developing viable architecturally sound solutions for victims of natural disasters. We would like to thank Sushant School of Art and Architecture for being one of our first and most supportive partners in this initiative with active involvement from both the students and the faculty."

An illustration manual and video CD demonstrating the entire process of building the shelter alongwith design and construction details in Hindi, English and local languages will also be shared with victims and organizations interested in building such shelters in the affected regions.

Primary Media Contact: Pallavi Sharma, [email protected], 91-8394901869

Secondary Media Contact: Rinu Jha, [email protected], 91-9999687155