Abstract

Disasters happen around the world, leaving many impacts on developing as well as developed countries. One major impact is the displacement of different populations, where people lose their permanent shelter and do not have an immediate alternative. This topic has been rarely addressed as an architectural issue. Humanitarians provide most of the literature available, based on their humane research that is more related to health and human welfare. However, some NGOs, non-profit organizations and few architectural practitioners are involved in the process of solving the problem proposed where they do not tackle the problem from an academic approach. Instead, they put their efforts into practice. The paper aims to define the emergency shelter unit, and to investigate its temporary nature, preventing it from becoming a permanent shelter—especially in developing countries like Egypt that lack the managerial skills to take an instant action to save or temporarily solve a sudden problem. The paper offers an attempt to derive the design guidelines to build emergency shelters suitable for the local environment, by classifying the different types of shelters while focusing on the analysis of emergency shelter units previously used. Then it will use the design guidelines to recommend a local design for an emergency shelter unit in Egypt.