techos: disaster response(s) for puerto rico

Photo by Jorge Silén.

Doña María. Photo by Jorge Silén.

Drone view of María’s house. Photo by Luisel Zayas.

Photo by Jorge Silén.

Crew at work. Drone view by Luisel Zayas.

Drone view of the houses of María and her sister Leonor. Photo by Luisel Zayas.

The finished roofs of María and Leonor. Photo by Luisel Zayas.

Photo by Jorge Silén.

Johanna, a mother of four who lost her roof and had no power or water by the time we met her.

Johanna’s house, located on a hill in Villalba.

Photo by Luisel Zayas.

Photo by Jorge Silén.

Visit to María six months after finishing her roof.

Visit to Johanna six months after the project.

Villalba, Puerto Rico 2018

MIT School of Architecture and Planning

with: Luisel Zayas and Jorge Silén design team: Cristina Solis, Gabrielle Heffernan, Cheyenne Vandevoorde, Jackie Lin, Alexander Beaudoin, Catherine Lie, Courtney Stephen, and Yifen Zhong

The greatest humanitarian challenge we face today is that of providing shelter. The physical design of our homes, neighborhoods and communities shapes every aspect of our live, yet where architects are most desperately needed, they can least be afforded.

— Design Like You Give a Damn, Architecture for Humanity (2006)

Sixty days after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, the most immediate necessity was still the lack of shelter. Even though many buildings survived the hurricane, a significant amount of them was left without a roof. Despite the distribution of tarpaulins, a standard emergency aid response, many more still remained braced against the elements, awaiting help. Through this hands-on initiative, students had to face the design challenge of devising and building resilient, affordable and scalable strategies to shelter the surviving structures. These post-hurricane condition made us face questions regarding the essentials tools and assets our discipline can and should contribute to a humanitarian crisis.

During the first week of this design-build workshop, funded by MIT and Foundation for Puerto Rico, students participated of lectures with active international and local nonprofits working on disaster relief and shelter construction. This, in addition to project visits, provided a backdrop of existing models and the challenges to device our own strategies. The remaining time was focused on building. Through this process, we also collaborated with students from the University of Puerto Rico, School of Architecture, government officials, and community leaders.

The Script

One of the biggest lessons from the field was that amidst the disaster, individuals did not have access to the necessary design and construction knowledge to rebuild their homes in the best way possible with the limited resources at hand. This prompted me to develop a script to help families both visualize and estimate the amount of material and cost required to build our roof over a simple house of any size. A material schedule would be exported for cost estimation, since we knew the market value of every component. This project is still in progress.

This project was referenced in Spectrum, MIT Tech Connection, Slice of MIT, News 9, Noticentro, La Perla del Sur, and Noticias de Ponce.

One hundred days after Hurricane Maria devastated the island, the most immediate necessity is still the lack of shelter. Even though many buildings survived the hurricane, a significant amount of them were left without “TECHOS”. Despite the distribution of tarpaulins, a standard emergency aid response, many more still remain braced against the elements, awaiting help. Through this hands-on initiative, MIT students were able to successfully design and build resilient, affordable and scalable strategies to shelter four of the surviving structures. The month-long workshop submerges a group of eight MIT students to the current post-hurricane conditions raising forth questions regarding the essential tools and assets that our discipline can contribute to a humanitarian crisis. Video - Jorge Silén, Luisel Zayas Post - Jorge Silén