Architects I-Beam Design constructed a house for refugees made from wooden shipping pallets in a New York warehouse last month.

Designed for refugees, the house can be quickly assembled and needs no extra materials transported as pallets are used to deliver supplies of food, clothing and medical supplies to disaster areas.

Houses made from pallets would not only provide temporary shelter but could be adapted using locally available materials into permanent housing.

The following information is from I-Beam:

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Refugee Housing comes to 57th Street

The nondescript warehouse on the corner of West 57th street at the entrance to the Henry Hudson Parkway is usually home to the assorted boxes, crates and old furniture you would expect to find in a warehouse. But for the past week it has been home to an entirely different type of inhabitant; a full-scale house built entirely from castaway shipping pallets.

For the past week New York Architect firm I-Beam Design has been building a prototype of their award-winning refugee Pallette House in preparation for its premiere at the Milan Architecture Triennale. The Triennale entitled, ‘A Home For All’ promotes research into emergency housing in order to collect and compare plans for a different constructive, social and economic model of the home and of communities.

I-Beam’s Palette House is made of wooden shipping palettes. Palettes are versatile, recyclable, sustainable, and easily assembled. Their transportation cost is negligible because they are used to carry shipments of clothing, food, and medical supplies to disaster areas.

Although most disaster housing is temporary, the Palette House easily evolves naturally from emergency shelter to permanent house with the addition local materials like rubble, stone, earth, mud, plaster and concrete.

Architects Suzan Wines and Azin Valy built the Pallete House with the generous support of Douglas and Helena Durst and the Chashama Performance group who donated the space for construction. Pallets were donated by Dominick Davi of Pallets Unlimited. Jimmy Di Domenico and Mario Denucci where the contractors that donated their time, tools, skills and generosity to make this project happen.

Additionally, I-Beam Design is looking for a home for their Pallette house. They are looking to donate the house to any worthy organization looking to exhibit it or use it for humanitarian housing.