Abstract
Relief Frame proposes a deployable construction system designed to provide immediate, adaptive architectural responses to natural disasters across diverse climatic zones. This thesis explores a framework composed of standardized, reconfigurable elements that can be rapidly deployed and tailored to site-specific environmental conditions and community needs. By leveraging a single system that morphs based on regional climate demands—arid, continental, and tropical—the project foregrounds flexibility and resilience as core design principles in emergency architecture.
Three geographically and climatically distinct sites serve as test sites for this system: San Bernardino, California (wildfire-prone), Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (tornado-prone), and Little Havana in Miami, Florida (hurricane-prone). Each deployment scenario demonstrates how the same structural elements can be rearranged to support essential recovery function such as shelter, aid distribution, hygiene facilities, workspace, and administration—while responding to specific environmental, and social contexts.
Relief Frame addresses critical gaps in current disaster response protocols, which often prioritize temporary shelter without adequately considering long-term spatial needs, or local climate conditions. By offering a scalable and climate-responsive construction system, this project allows for solutions that are immediate yet adaptable, empowering communities to engage in their own recovery processes. This thesis critiques and builds upon existing modular and prefabricated disaster relief proposals, which frequently rely on rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions. While many prefabricated systems focus on speed and mass production, Relief Frame emphasizes flexibility, reusability, and contextual adaptation, demonstrating how a single system of parts can evolve into climate-specific configurations and foster not just survival, but dignity and functionality in post-disaster environments.
