Amazing and inspiring architectural techniques for constructing temporary refugee housing:
Naming his technique Superadobe, Khalili suggested that astronauts carry up empty sacks, pack them full of lunar dust and then Velcro them together into a climbing, narrowing spiral. The end shape would look like a child's stacking-rings toy. When Khalili brought Superadobe back down to earth (he now runs an institute in California teaching the technique), he switched to standard sandbags — or alternatively, long hollow tubes pumped full of sand. The idea is that your base material, be it moon dust or just plain dirt, is almost always right under your feet, wherever you are.
While Velcro might work for the moon, where there's no threat of hurricanes, on earth Khalili decided that four-point barbed wire was the best (and cheapest) option. The barbs act as a mortar between sandbag layers and grip with a tensile strength good enough to pass California seismic codes. The shelter's parabolic dome shape deflects rain and snow, its dirt walls provide excellent insulation and the form adapts to virtually any scale, from hut to warehouse.
"Sandbags and barbed-wire," Khalili says. "The materials of war now used as shelter." In a post-conflict zone, he theorizes, the homeless could convert a battle's detritus into a new neighborhood. He even envisions some therapeutic value in the act. Refugees would require a bit of training and perhaps a few weeks' worth of labor.
(Thanks, Steve!)
