These Four Walls Won’t Fall Down

Peter Brewin and William Crawford were visiting a refugee camp in northern Uganda in 2004 when a tropical storm broke. Within 20 minutes the dining tent had flooded as rain washed in, leaked under fly sheets and soaked into the mud floors. "The tent became filled with water, and all the children rushed out in search of shelter," Brewin says. He and Crawford saw huts elsewhere in Uganda that were little more than wooden frames covered with plastic sheeting. Residents complained of how easily members of the rebel-led Lord's Resistance Army could set fire to these flimsy structures, or break into them and kidnap children to add to their ranks. The pair visited a World Food Program storage center, where thieves had cut through the soft-skinned walls to steal supplies, leaving behind graffiti praising bloodthirsty LRA leader Joseph Kony.

The trip gave the young men—both are now 28—pause. Back home in London they had developed a new, superstrong material for a design competition at their school, London's Royal College of Art. They called it concrete canvas, and they used it to form rapidly deploying structures that looked something like igloos. But, says Crawford, "it wasn't until we traveled to Uganda and spoke to aid agencies that we realized [its] full potential." Now, says Brewin, "we're most interested in the humanitarian applications."

There are more than 33 million refugees and internally displaced persons worldwide, many of them crowded into camps that lack secure, insulated shelters and permanent infrastructure for staff and supplies. In extreme climates such as Afghanistan's, a refugee can die of exposure faster than hunger, and traditional soft-skinned fabric tents, which are difficult to insulate and are vulnerable to wind, can last as little as three weeks. More permanent shelters are hard to transport and take time to assemble. As the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, which left 3 million homeless, and Hurricane Katrina, which displaced tens of thousands, showed, refugees sometimes need long-term shelters that can be erected fast. "Putting up a raggedy old tent just isn't any good anymore," says UNICEF spokesperson Patrick McCormick. The group is one of several aid organizations intrigued by the possibilities of concrete canvas.

The son of an architect, Crawford grew up traveling the globe. "Living in a variety of countries, some of which were relatively young developing nations, gave me an insight for the way different people live," he says. He met Brewin, who had spent a year as an officer with the Royal Engineers in the British Army, at the Royal College of Art, where they were both studying industrial design. The two partnered on several design competitions, including a 2004 one sponsored by the British Cement Association to develop innovative uses for cement. "We had an awful lot of those 'Aha!' moments," says Brewin. "But you know you're on to something when you come to one where you can't find a reason why it won't work."

Concrete canvas is made of cement-impregnated fabric folded into a plastic sack. After the fabric is saturated with water, the structure is inflated, and dries to form an impermeable shell. The shelters can be sterilized (for use as an operating theater), secured with a locking door, insulated with earth or sandbags or ventilated with windows cut out of the skin. They come in three sizes ranging from 52 to 177 square feet of floor space, and can be joined to form larger structures to store food, equipment and even vehicles. The purpose of the structure depends largely on climate, says Crawford. "In Africa, where the fabric tents are often adequate, they're going to be most appropriate for key infrastructure like medical centers, storage centers, offices for aid agencies and long-term accommodations for staff," he says. "But in extreme environments they really come into their own as housing."

In addition to UNICEF, Médecins sans Frontières and ACTED (a nongovernmental organization in Afghanistan) plan on testing the shelters for refugee camps. The British and U.S. militaries are interested in using the canvas material to reinforce vehicle tracks and sandbag walls. Brewin and Crawford have been contacted by individuals in the United States and Canada wanting to buy structures to use as houses, gardening huts and tornado shelters. They haven't settled on a price yet, but say they're trying to keep the units they sell to aid organizations as cheap as possible. And they're continuing to refine the technology to make lighter and faster-drying versions specifically for emergency shelters. (Current models, the largest of which accommodates 15 people, weigh between 1,000 and 5,000 pounds before assembly. They can be delivered by truck or light aircraft. The small version can be put up by as few as two people in about an hour, with an additional 12 hours' drying time.)