Philippines has some of the poorest people in the world whose troubles are compounded by typhoons and floods.  A global architectural design contest formed by a partnership of the Quezon City government, Climate Change Commission, MyShelter Foundation, United Architects of the Philippines, and Philippine White Helmets was floated to come up with ideas to face such natural calamities. One of the winning projects was ‘Disaster-Proof Bamboo Housing’.

The project was designed by an Indian group of architects (Vasanth Packirisamy, Monish Kumar, Vikas Sharma, Sakshi Kumar, and Komal Gupta).  The housing units and community halls are built on stilts with side elevation designed to avoid flooding and withstand storms. Moreover, the landscape is designed to direct the water from the cluster housing units toward the lower elevation and to absorb storm water as much as it can. The idea is that in the event of storms and typhoons when plugin bamboo units are destroyed, they can be easily and inexpensively rebuilt and plugged into the existing core.

Image Courtesy: www.architecturecaribbean.com