Mass Timber Post-Disaster Housing

Global warming is set to increase the intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes, and thus flooding, in the Gulf South. One of the main causes of global warming is carbon emissions, and one of the main contributors to carbon emissions in the United States is transportation. If we collectively seek to lessen the effects of global warming, we will begin to phase out personal gas-powered vehicles and instead turn to electric vehicles and mass transit options. Thus, in the future, parking garages and parking lots will be less used.

However, even if we phased out personal vehicles immediately, global warming is still set to increase the intensity of flooding in the Gulf South. There might be an increase in the need for disaster relief housing, particularly in places like New Orleans which are low-lying and susceptible to heavy rain and storm surge flooding.

One type of building that will be less used in the future and fits many needs of disaster relief housing are parking garages. For this reason, we propose parking garages as an ideal typology of an existing building for the insertion of disaster relief housing and, once the threat of disaster is past, repurposing. To bolster efforts to combat global warming, to offset the embodied carbon existing in the concrete parking structure, and to go toward achieving net-zero energy, we suggest that these housing structures be built from CLT. 

As soon as we knew the final review was going to be virtual due to COVID-19 we emphasized creating an engaging and animated final presentation to explain our ideas rather than another slideshow for the reviewers to sit through. The video below is the full presentation followed by a selection of images and videos produced with Hannah Bannister in Judith Kinnard's Mass Timber and the Gulf South Research Studio.

The final presentation took place on Zoom on May 5, 2020. The guest critics were Tim Love, Deborah Gans, Shawna Meyer, Derek Tynan, Kentaro Tsubaki, and Inaki Alday. See this link for the reviewer's responses.