PALLET HOUSE - MULTIFUNCTIONAL GARDEN SHED OR CABIN

The Pallet House prototype designed by I-Beam Design was featured in HRH Prince Charles' Royal Gardens as part of an exhibition on sustainable design, organized by Prince's Charities, Start, along with The Earth Awards, The Financial Times and IBM. The interior was decorated by Wallpaper magazine.

The inspiration for the Pallet House Project came from the fact that 84% of the world's refugees could be housed with a year's supply of recycled American pallets. With one and a half year of pallet production in the US alone, 33 million refugees can live in a Pallet House.

Nearly 21 million pallets end in landfills each year which can house over 40,000 refugees.
Pallets are specifically designed for transport and delivery - so cost is negligible when carrying shipments of food, medicine and other types of aid to refugees. A 250 square foot 'Pallet House' requires 100 recycled pallets nailed and lifted into place by 4-5 people using hand tools in under a week.

Wooden shipping pallets provide an inexpensive, readily available, sustainable and highly versatile building module that empowers each family to build according to their own needs. Tarps or corrugated roofing prevent water penetration until enough locally available materials like earth, wood and thatch can be gathered to cover the exterior and fill the wall cavities for insulation. The Pallet House adapts to most climates on Earth and provides a longer lasting, more durable solution to housing some of the world's 33 million displaced people who spend an average of 7 years in refugee camps.

The Pallet House won an award from Architecture for Humanity in 1999 and has since been featured in numerous books and journals including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, El Pais in Spain La Republica in Italy and Architecture for Humanity's seminal book "Design Like You Give A Damn".

In addition to the prototype for the Earth Awards, I-Beam Design has built Pallet structures in New York, Indiana, and at the Architecture Triennial in Milan. They are currently working on housing for people who lost their homes during the earthquake in Haiti and Pakistan.

I-Beam Design, founded in 1998 by Suzan Wines and Azin Valy, is an award winning architecture and Design firm based in NY. Their key personnel have a broad range of design and construction experience including corporate, commercial, cultural, landscape and residential projects. "I-Beam Design repurposes the abandoned, rethinks the readily available, and celebrates future possibilities."