Island Nations Initiative - Village in a Box

A home-building kit that unskilled labor can construct and, with carefully pre-designed and pre-engineered components, can withstand hurricane and earthquake conditions

The “Village in a Box” (VIB) GroForm Building Kit can serve both humanitarian needs and the ecotourism industry with the potential for the latter to aid in situations when relief agencies are unavailable or unable to function. The approach is based on a basic armature framework along with several options to evolve the building according to user needs.

The VIB serves immediate needs as a hard–panel tent with the ability to evolve into a roof and subsequently a home. Every effort is made for each stage to function well spatially with privacy possible even at the tent stage through the use of the structural support members as shelves, partitions, and other storage devices. The advantage of this panelized approach, referred to as groForms, is that each stage serves as part of the next, starting from the foundation that keeps people off the ground to this same foundation becoming the basis of the home. Aesthetically, the building looks traditional with no stigma that it is disaster relief housing that most tents so often take on. In this manner, we are able to embrace the spirit of community and dignity from the start.

The VIB kit, in its most advanced level, helps create the means for true self–reliance: economically through the support and development of local skills and by balancing resource needs on a daily basis at the home and community scales. The water cycle is complete from harvesting to waste water; the food cycle from establishing gardens to re-sourcing the organic waste; the material cycle from establishing tree plantations to configuring a building for change, disassembly, and barter. All aspects of the building kit are tailored to use local labor.