2004-7-4
This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English Development
Report.
Sean Godsell designs buildings. He is an award-winning architect
in Australia. He is also active in social issues. Mister Godsell has
designed an emergency shelter for refugees and homeless people. He
calls the structure a FutureShack. But it is not really a building.
Mister Godsell made it from an old shipping container used to
transport goods.
The steel box is about six-and-a-half meters long and
two-and-a-half meters wide. It is also two-and-a-half meters high.
Mister Godsell covered the inside
with wood. Parts of the walls fold down to make beds and a table.
The structure also has areas for cooking and bathing. There are two
doors for airflow. And there is glass on part of the back wall. The
top also has windows for light. Balanced above the top of the
structure is an angled roof.
Mister Godsell says FutureShacks could be sent around the world
in times of crisis. He estimates that each structure would cost
about fifteen-thousand dollars if produced in large numbers.
But some critics have questioned how useful this temporary
shelter would be in hot weather. Mister Godsell says air
conditioners could be placed in the windows to cool the containers.
These machines could even be powered with energy from the sun.
Yet there are also questions about the effect that FutureShacks
might have on the future of refugees who have lost their homes.
Norman Day is a professor of architecture in Australia. He has
written that FutureShacks could rob refugees of the desire they need
to rebuild their lives.
Mister Godsell says he got the idea when he was a student
fourteen years ago. But he did not develop the structure until
nineteen-ninety-nine. He entered the design into a competition
organized by the group Architecture for Humanity. The competition
was to design housing for returning refugees in Kosovo, the Serbian
province now administrated by the United Nations. The FutureShack
design was praised for its usefulness, but was not put into use.
A model built by Mister Godsell can be seen through October in
New York City. It is at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National
Design Museum. Internet users can find out more about the
FutureShack at www.seangodsell.com. That's www.seangodsell.com.
This VOA Special English Development Report was written by Jill
Moss. This is Robert Cohen.