At $5,000, the design is affordable and customizable Welcome back to The Architect's City, a monthly series inviting an emerging architect to reimagine an existing structure in his or her city, submitting a speculative proposal for Curbed readers. This month, how architect David Lopez used feedback from students to modify a shelter originally designed for Haiti so that it might work to address homelessness in the U.S.
David Lopez wasn?t looking to modify his refugee shelters when he presented the project to 200 teenagers at Baltimore Design School. He?d developed the shelters two years earlier with a group of students from the Maryland Institute College of Art; after a trip to Port-au-Prince to observe the efficacy of the variety of emergency shelters deployed following the devastation of 2010?s earthquake, Lopez and his class had built their own, $2,000, easily deployed structure. Once classwork was done, he?d spent a year talking to relief agencies, working to get the prototype?which could be assembled in just 12 hours?into the world. When financing proved sticky, the project stalled. Six months later, Lopez, founder and principal of Baltimore firm Led Better, was invited to speak to the then-new design-focused public middle and high school.
?It was the most compelling group of questions I received,? Lopez says. ?In a number of situations, students came from troubled areas of town. They regularly saw dilapidated shelters and rowhouses and homeless people in their co...