Designing Shelter For After The Storm

"What if a Category 3 hurricane leveled an entire city neighborhood and left nearly 40,000 families homeless?

That's the question the city is asking architects to answer as part of a competition to design long-term temporary housing for residents displaced by a catastrophic hurricane or other disaster.

Co-sponsored by the city Office of Emergency Management, the Rockefeller Foundation and Architects for Humanity New York, the contest was devised to solve what officials call a uniquely urban problem: There isn't enough room for trailers or other types of existing, single-family temporary housing to serve the number of people who might be displaced if a storm were to hit a major metropolitan area like New York."