Wacky Cardboard Homeless Shelters Fold Out Like Origami

Wacky Cardboard Homeless Shelters Fold Out Like Origami

10/26/2010

Fold a thousand, make a wish?

Origami has inspired countless gadgets: bicycles, MP3 players, and now,
homeless shelters?

Sounds like a gimmick, but yeah. Tina Hovsepian, a recent grad of USC’s
architecture school, has invented a cardboard shelter that pops up like an
origami balloon. A repeating diamond shape in the walls keeps the structure
stiff. When it’s time to move, the shelter folds flat, making it easy to
cart around. She calls it — wait for it! — Cardborigami.

A glorified cardboard box? Sure. The idea, though, is to make the shelters
(which can also be deployed in disaster situations) waterproof and
fire-resistant so they hold together better than something you’d find in the
parking lot of Office Depot. At the moment, she’s testing a treatment made
of a non-toxic by-product of sugarcane.

Hovsepian first created the structure in her fourth year at USC. Of course,
she isn’t the first young designer to turn a hand to housing the homeless. A
bunch of students at MIT made shelters out of recycled junk they found in
and around Cambridge a few years back. And in L.A., Eric Lindeman and Jason
Zasa designed EDAR, a shopping cart that converts into a tent, when they
were students at the Art Center in Pasadena. Hovsepian’s project is
different because, if all goes according to plan, it can be mass produced
for a pittance.

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From: A. Papazian