LAST GIFT
Application of virtual reality to design an incremental post-disaster housing
through a participatory approach.
LAST GIFT
proposes a participatory approach by means of VR interface to design an incremental system for the displaced population. It is a practice that aims to enhance inhabitants’ understanding of their behavior and its relationship with the habitation environment. The iterative process involves both generative search algorithm and interactions between designer and users, confronting with but developing from the existing framework of settlement formation and growth through a functional system that becomes a closer manifestation of users’ habits as it evolves.
In places strike by catastrophe, the demand for many houses being built in a short period of time pushes the consideration of designing post-disaster housing to lean towards speed and cost.
Neglecting the context in which they are located.
Village in Irrawaddy Delta, Myanmar
Post-disaster settlement in Pyinsalu, Myanmar
The timeline of disaster recovery is divided into phases where different types of disaster housings are deployed. Such segregation of the discrete phases is prolonging the recovery of the living environment of the traumatized victims.
The segregation refers to the material system of the three generally classified type of disaster housings that are almost mutually exclusive from each other. And the threshold in cost of acquiring a more permanent type of housing is high. In most cases, these systems that are designed for temporary purposes have to sustain for a period that is longer than their intended service life, which implies disaster victims are forced to live under such environment that is subject to degrade much faster than normal houses.
![Emergency Shelter [€380]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f0709a52e2c8e189069d98a/1594371847100-1TRX2P0IM7C6LBDW2HX2/1_Ql9tXUgUD3FPKsy08lfcTQ.jpeg)
Emergency Shelter [€380]
![Transitional Shelter [€1150]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f0709a52e2c8e189069d98a/1594371882024-CWM6KHJCA86V8L9LUXV2/73076598_2444617609155052_2545987455505399808_o.jpg)
Transitional Shelter [€1150]
![Permanent Housing [€12000]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5f0709a52e2c8e189069d98a/1594372046013-IQCP17IDQH1HKVBRSUD2/Post+Disaster+Reconstruction+and+the+Transition+from+Humanitarian+Relief+5.jpg)
Permanent Housing [€12000]
Intended Recovery
Actual Recovery
Post-disaster intervention in the pre-event phase
The new framework is developed from the existing framework in which the feedback loop occurs when natural disaster happens, and the use of certain typologies are being evaluated.
Technological advancement empowers a more accurate identification of risk and to take advantage also of the virtual environment to simulate the occupancy of disaster housing units.
In turn, evaluation can be performed, and data can be used to optimized various scenarios.
The guidelines issued by humanitarian agencies are being organized in a matrix in which the top row shows parameters of post-disaster housing that are identified by me as the most influential and the side column lists out conditions related to the contextual background of inhabitants that determines the range of values of each parameters that create a desirable environment in a post disaster scenario.
Physical parameters derived from existing post-disaster housing typologies
Case Studies of existing post-disaster housing are being broken down into sub-system they comprised of and the combinations of subsystems are being analyzed.
The denser region of lines represent the more popular options available in the industry and they can be compared with users' preferences to figure out the suitability of the existing typologies.
Data aggregates to locate natural disaster-prone areas and depict the way people live.
disaster risk data · political cultural data · environmental data
After analysing the three types of data, six different countries are selected as having high potential for the intervention I am proposing to take place.
Five out of six selected countries are situated within the Southeast Asia Continent.
Bangladesh
Haiti
Indonesia
Myanmar
Philippines
Sri Lanka
The methodologies, workflow and concepts of a number of built and speculative projects are being referenced to.
The contribution of this project to the body of knowledge in using a participatory approach in designing an incremental systems falls onto four key aspects, namely,
Participatory, Incrementality, Data and Modularity
Participatory
Through users’ simultaneous presence between the physical space and the VR medium, the participatory tools is used to collapse a time scale that is comparable to the course of disaster recovery in the simulation.
Participants are isolated from all the external stimuli in the immersive environment that trigger the most intuitive behavior in relation to living habits.
Gamification act as a data collection and analytical tools to retain the holistic nature of the solutions without simplifying them for participants who are not expected to have the knowledge of a building profession. The customized digital growth path tool initiates a dialogue between participants natural behavior and the virtual habitation environment.
Incrementality
The boundary of growth is not predefined and the interconnections of one unit and the other mark the boundary of growth.
The simulation of the increment is conditional and it is based on resource availability. The amount of resources added in each round of growth in the game is estimated according to the abundance of a particular resources in the region.
Factorization
The system proposed is based on modularity. The concept of factorization into the most fundamental form of livable unit is expressed as a house form that is composed of parametrically constructed and organized sub-components with the resources needed being carefully calculated, so it could be deployed at an early stage of disaster recovery.
Overview of VR participatory Tool
The objective is to simulate preferences and growth trajectory in the pre-event phase and once disaster occurs, to provide a functional prototype that can be utilized within a period that is shorter than the time required for conventional interim housing to be provided, and to inform the quantity of resources required for every stages of growth from a basic 16 – 28 sqm unit to a middle-class standard 120 sqm unit.
Game Interactions
Unit external definition
Proportion
Number and position of window openings
Roof Form
Material composition of wall
The house is being reshape by the new average parameters
Game Interactions
Unit internal definition
Pick bedroom
Pick kitchen
Pick bathroom
Room naming behavior
Through room naming in the initial unit and the later stages grown unit, user behavior in assigning programme is evaluated against three types of different naming behavior.
Anchor
User who always assign a certain function first and locate the rest around it.
Adjacent group
user who tends to group functions and place them one after the other.
Depth
User who tends to rank privacy as a more important aspect and place function following the depth of the space within the unit.
Move furniture interactions
as feedback for appropriateness of room assignation.
Algorithm to prevent the occurrence of space that is not functional.
Constraining player of not creating space that is smaller than 1.2m x 1.2m
Game Interactions
Unit expansion detail
At the end of this game, player are being asked to decide whether or not and how they would like to expand the unit. Their decision is informed by the amount of resources they own that round, which also restrict the option they have. In each round, a certain quantity of resources would be added estimated based on the region’s production and import dataset.
After all the expansion detail are collected from the player. The system will evaluate according to a grid count method which type of configuration the player expansion is intending to achieve.
Knowing the configuration helps predict the direction of the next expansion. In here, a grid count method is again used as an initial way to evaluate against each expansion.
If the result of the grid count are couldn’t distinguish the best prediction, transformation steps are used to further compare the similarity between each predictions with the player intention.
Unit growth optimization
Data collected in the game interactions are fed into the evolutionary solver. Among all the solutions being generated, the fittest configuration is chosen, and according the principle that windows are more needed in habitable rooms, the range of index for window placement can be further narrow down.
OPTIMIZATION GOALS :
NUMBER OF ROOMS = 6
S.D. OF AREA PROPORTION OF SPACE = 7.53
ADJACENCY OF DIFFERENT SIZES OF ROOMS AS CLOSE TO NODE - LINK GRAPH AS POSSIBLE
MINIMIZE CORRIDOR - LIKE SPACE [ PROPORTION OF SPACE DIMENSIONS > 5 : 1 ]
MINIMIZE UNDERSIZED SPACE [ AREA < 1.44m2 ( 1.2m x 1.2m ) ]
MINIMIZE MODIFICATION MADE TO EXISTING PARTITION
LAST GIFT speculative settlement organization
Void will be left in the planning of the settlement but these void will not be leftover space because of the thorough understanding of the culture and expansion behavior, resulting in various open space that transform dynamically to accommodate the needs of different programme during the recovery.
LAST GIFT is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia
developed in the Master of Advanced Architecture in 2019/20 by:
Students: Timothy Ka Kui Lam
Faculty: Mathilde Marengo and Eugenio Bettucchi