Emergency Sheltering in a Global Pandemic: Design of a Deployable Origami Shelter

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic left a significant amount of the homeless population without access to congregate shelters due to capacity limits or shelter closures. Origami, the art of paper folding, can serve as a solution to this need for temporary sheltering because folding patterns allow a 2D piece of material to be deployed quickly into a 3D shelter. In particular, accordion fold patterns have been commonly used for deployable shelter designs because they can be generated from simple geometries, are easy to deploy, and are structurally efficient. However, they can be difficult or impossible to fold compactly, which means that shelter is not easy for the user to transport. In order to satisfy this need for an emergency, deployable shelter that is both a rigid shelter when deployed, but also compact when folded flat, this thesis explores the shelter design of the combination of the Distributed Frame Accordion Shelter and Yoshimura crease patterns. Origami fold simulations and the fabrication of small-scale prototypes using various materials were conducted to determine the functionality and performance of the shelter design. The prototypes demonstrated that overlaying the two crease patterns results in a stable, yet flat-folding shelter. The individual crease patterns maintain their own one degree of freedom foldability, while smoothly transitioning from the deployed state to the flat-folded state. New designs for deployable structures with the preferred characteristics can be created by combining multiple folds. This shelter design can be scaled up to accommodate one person or a family, providing people in need with a more convenient emergency temporary shelter that is both structurally sound and transportable.