Semi-finalist
Climate: Ecosystems + Housing

Hex House, a rapid deploy, dignified housing system

Team Leader
Amro Sallam
Solution Overview & Team Lead Details
Our Organization
Architects For Society
What is the name of your solution?
Hex House, a rapid deploy, dignified housing system
Provide a one-line summary of your solution.
The home is designed to be sustainable, flatpack, modular, off-grid, rapidly deployable, long stay and dignified home, ready to assemble onsite
Film your elevator pitch.
What specific problem are you solving?

Specific Problem and Scale

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), at least 82.4 million people around the world have been forced to flee their homes and are displaced either within or outside of their countries. Refugees are displaced for at least 10 to 30 years on average; therefore, this problem is not only massive, but also quite protracted.

Not all refugees or displaced populations live in refugee camps; some populations start to integrate into the host countries’ urban centers over time, in search of work and self-reliance. The initially displaced, however, often have no choice but to settle into camps in which the UNHCR estimates house a total population of 6.6 million people.  

 Current refugee camps and their shelters are beset with a number of social, economic, technical and cultural problems. Displaced populations live in conditions that are uncomfortable, unsanitary, and inhumane with no or very little privacy in spaces such as enclosures with no interior partitions. The shelters also do not provide adequate protection from the climate as they’re often uninsulated, fabric tents which easily flood during rain events.

Additionally, they lack security, windows, electricity, and plumbing leaving the dwellers vulnerable to risks from disease, theft, and mental, physical, and social deterioration which only worsens over time. Camp layouts are constantly cramped, with tents lined up close together with no or little private outdoor space. Quite simply, they represent undignified living.

What is your solution?

The Hex House Solution

Single Hex House - Augsburg Nobel Peace Prize Forum (AFS) (AFS)

Our innovative housing solution, the Hex House, is designed to be sustainable, flatpack, modular, off-grid, rapidly deployable, long-stay, and dignified. It is ready to assemble on-site with very few tools by non-builders. The basic home kits include telescoping tube steel legs, Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) for walls, floor and roof, and can be customized with desired interior and exterior finishes. The inherent structural stability of the hexagonal form and the rigid construction of SIPs preclude the use of added structure.

Hex House Flat-Pack Kit System (AFS)
Interior/ Exterior Finish Options (AFS)

The homes are elevated above the ground by telescoping steel posts that adjust to uneven site conditions, which are then fastened to concrete pier foundations. This feature has several advantages; it minimizes the foundation footprint from the typical concrete slab and foundation walls to seven cylindrical piers. If concrete is not desirable, lightweight steel helical piers can be substituted. It also allows rainwater to run under the homes instead of flooding it as well as provide passive cooling via openings in the floor system that allow cooler air to flow up and through the home. Finally, this elevation reduces the intrusion of rodents, snakes and other pests.


Community Planning Strategy (AFS)

Our site planning layout demonstrates how the hexagonal plan can be combined into various combinations of five-unit clusters to create shared courtyards and semi-private gathering spaces within as well as in-between these arrangements. 

Four Unit Cluster with Courtyard (AFS)

These radial clusters are further multiplied to create large central plazas where community activities like trade, education and various community events can take place.

Hex House Community w/ Central Plaza (AFS)

The goal is to create an environment that supports interaction, exchange of ideas, and a strong sense of community engagement. We want to create homes that are part of a community or neighborhood, and not simply stand-alone shelters, a concept not addressed in most current camp layouts. Whether linear or radial, these clusters can be oriented to allow for accessible drives and pedestrian walkways.

Single Unit Interior Space (AFS)

The single 510 SF (47 SM) Hex House unit is a compact two-bedroom home with all the amenities intended for small families. The home utilizes passive cooling, solar panels & rainwater harvesting. Two single units can be combined into one ‘double’ unit of 1020 SF (95 SM) with three or four bedrooms for larger families.


Single/ Double Unit Floor Plans (AFS)

With an emphasis on flexibility and customization, there are several interior planning possibilities. Three units can be combined to create a much larger 1,530 SF (142 SM) home to accommodate larger, extended families. Should a family need more space, additional units can be added to existing homes over time with minimal disturbance to other units.


Triple Unit Floor Plan (AFS)
Single Hex Unit (AFS)


Construction Documents (AFS)
Who does your solution serve, and in what ways will the solution impact their lives?

A. The Target Population

The Hex House serves a large proportion of the 82.4 million displaced individuals globally. This includes those displaced for political, environmental, or economic reasons such as individuals or families displaced by war or fleeing violent persecution in their countries, displaced by wildfires, earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding, and other environmental catastrophes and those who’ve become homeless due to mental health issues leading to financial deterioration. 

In all these cases, our solution offers them a stable dignified home which is fundamental to being able to take the next steps in achieving stability in their new environment. Further, The Hex House solution offers them a real community where they can begin to thrive.

As reported by the large aid agencies, administered refugee camps are a huge financial and administrative burden whereby the specific organization must manage all aspects of the refugees’ lives. This leads to the creation of an unsustainable and a degrading situation over time. This has pushed many experts to reconsider the administrative model and start to reframe these communities as “Special Economic Zones” in which residents can become self-reliant by creating financial, social, and educational opportunities for themselves.

 

B. How the Hex House Serves Their Needs 

Our housing model supports this strategy by offering home kits that are designed to be assembled by low-skilled, local labor. All the components are manufactured in a local factory giving members of the community job opportunities, then transported to site by another group of members, and then assembled by another. This creates an instantaneous local housing economy which later can expand to maintaining the homes. This model also gives the population a sense of ownership of the homes and communities they built for themselves, which in turn increases their sense of responsibility for the upkeep of their homes. These feelings do not always come about with an agency-provided shelter/ tent. This socioeconomic model is fundamental to the displaced population in forging a new home, community, economy, and creating self-sufficiency which become enablers to making the next move, whether to stay in the newly formed Special Economic Zone, integrate into host country, return home or in the case of local homeless populations, reintegrate back into society.

How are you and your team well-positioned to deliver this solution?

Single Family Unit, Alzaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)We will discuss three main groups which we’ve engaged and researched to develop our design. We’ll discuss them in order of relative urgency and need. The first is the international refugee population. The second is the local (US) homeless population. The third major group is the world’s informal settlement population, estimated by the U.N. at 1 billion worldwide.

1. Refugees

AlZaatari Camp - Getty Images

Our initial design was developed in 2015 as a response to the influx of Syrian refugees into Jordan and Egypt. Two of our founding members are nationals of these two countries. One of these two, Yousef Oqleh, was in Jordan at the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. Yousef began researching the crisis by making repeated visits to the then infamous Al Zaatari Camp. He conducted interviews with the refugees, UNHCR staff on site, and connected with the local fabricator of the agency-provided shelter “caravans” to understand the entire process of planning, fabrication, transportation, setting up, and maintenance as well as social and cultural challenges on the site.

 

Manufacturing of bathroom Caravan Units, AlMafraq, Jordan (AFS)
Single Family Caravans, Near AlZaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)

More importantly, he conducted a number of interviews with the community, who complained of the inadequacy of the caravans which were small (150 SF), uninsulated, lacked partitions for privacy, very insecure, and often broken into.

Single Family Unit, Alzaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)


Single Family Unit with Improvised Exterior Space Enclosure, AlZaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)

They complained of the lack of private outdoor space which most Syrian households had, in the form of courtyards.

Shared Bathrooms, AlZaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)

They complained about the public toilets for which they had to leave their shelters at any time to use, day or night, sunshine, or rain.

Drinking Water Tank, Outside the Alzaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)

They also complained about the potable water tanks provided by the agency that sat in the open desert sun providing only scalding water that had to be cooled for hours before drinking.

Typical Exterior/ Interior Spaces, Alzaatari Camp, Jordan (AFS)

These visits along with good photo documentation gave us much insight into the dire conditions of the camp. They also informed our building design and urban planning schemes. After our first few design drafts, Yousef revisited the camp to show the families whom he had befriended, images of the designs and gathered their feedback, which we incorporated.


Hex House School, HafenCity, Hamburg, Germany (AFS)
Hex House School Interior, HafenCity, Hamburg, Germany (AFS)

Stephan Wedrich, a board member and a German national, led our next research effort in working with Flüchtlingshilfe HafenCity e.V., a German nonprofit organization that provided housing assistance to refugees in Hamburg. This study and partnership led to the construction of a Hex House unit which served as a school building educating refugees about life in Germany and assisting in their resettlement in the country. 

The school was located in in the "Hafen City" urban development right at the River Elbe and near the famous Concert hall "Elbphilharmonie and the heart of a refugee housing development (HafenCity), and was much welcomed by the community as it was a huge step in helping them integrate into society.


2. Homeless

L.A. Skid Row - Getty Images

The second community identified as a group that could benefit from our design is the homeless population in the United States, personified by the growing issue throughout the state of California. We collaborated with several NGOs working directly with homelessness to address the need for temporary, transitional and permanent housing. We engaged with organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Association for Community Design, Thrive LA, Minnesota Design Center, among others, to research their current perspectives on the issues and explore possible solutions from various perspectives.

While the design of a rapidly deployable, sustainable, and dignified housing solution is paramount, homelessness is an issue that needs to be tackled in a collective approach including strategies for mental health therapy, job training, and communal support. Therefore, while we realized that AFS cannot find a solution for the issue alone, it can partner with other organizations to provide a collective and comprehensive approach to addressing homelessness.

We did work with several organizations to develop various schemes of the Hex House to address a number of site conditions from urban parking lots to suburban and rural open lands. We had meetings with municipal leaders in Los Angeles to discuss zoning ordinances and building code issues which need to be addressed at a policy and design level to allow for homeless housing to be established in certain jurisdictions.

Homeless Veteran Medical & Housing Plans (AFS)
Homeless Veteran Housing Block Plans (AFS)
Homeless Veteran Housing collective Schemes (AFS)

We have also been contacted by several Native American organizations who were especially attracted to the radial planning layout the houses created. These planning layouts were quite familiar to the traditional Native American communal way of life. Similarly, we worked with homeless veteran organizations to develop community designs that stressed co-living and collective living arrangements. All these experiences helped inform our design decisions, big and small. We look forward to continuing our explorations and collaborations to further refine our design to address this disadvantaged community.


3. Informal Settlements

Old Cairo Informal City (worldarchitecture.org)

While our Hex House solution doesn’t target populations living in informal settlements directly, it was very much informed by the unique designs and socio-economic structures brought about by the architecture and planning processes these populations  embraced to produce viable and enduring communities.

In the near future, we believe we will be able to build on the success of the Hex House solution to address this very critical and large population. We hope to offer similar innovations in designs, sustainable construction materials, business models, systems thinking, and scalable technology to create targeted solutions to improve informal settlements as well.

Our solutions target problems at a systems level rather than provide symptomatic fixes, which may actually exacerbate the problem in the long-term. Our solution, from the beginning, therefore, is a scalable one, that can meet the needs of the refugee as well as homeless populations. At the same time, we are learning and understanding much about the bigger and more chronic problem of global informal settlements which will require the expertise from our architecture group as well as consultants in other fields.


Amro Sallam, Cairo 

Cairo's Informal Settlements (Getty Images)

Amro Sallam, one of the original founders of AFS was born in Cairo, Egypt. David E. Sims, an economist and urban planner, estimates that 40% of the 100 million strong population of Egyptians live in informal settlements. The capital city, Cairo has a population of nearly 22 million according to the UN-World Population Prospects, which means that approximately 8.8 million Cairenes live in informal settlements. 

Ezbet Abu Qarn Study - Amro Sallam (AFS)

Amro’s graduate thesis at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) focused on this phenomenon. He spent four months traveling across Cairo’s assorted informal settlement types, interviewing residents, and researching the socio-economic and political issues which contributed to such migration and settlements.

Embaba Settlement Study - Amro Sallam (AFS)

Since then, he has continued to conduct research on issues specific to Cairo, Egypt and expanded it to others like the favelas in Brazil, shanties in India, and other parts of the globe. The various manifestations of this phenomenon in his opinion and understanding, are solutions, rather than problems. He has since curated architecture design courses at the University of Minnesota to teach students about the ingenuity, social cohesion, economic vitality, resilience and other amazing attributes hidden under the surface, in these communities.


Sonal Mithal, Kochi, India

Revitalization of Canal, Kochi, India, Sonal Mithal (AFS)

Sonal Mithal, another AFS team member, has researched the informal settlements at Kochi, India. She has also curated architectural design studios that center the significance of inclusivity and ecology for a socially sustainable Indian city. At Kochi, her work has focused on identifying and reviving the broken ecological networks and integrating them with social and economic agendas. Neighborhoods of informal housing as well as small-scale economic platforms--dependent on the Mullassery Canal and the adjoining road—now form the edge of the canal. These low-income settlements are most vulnerable during floods, characteristic of the city. People living in these informal settlements are subjected to recurring loss of health, property, and displacements.  

Existing Canal, Kochi, India, Sonal Mithal (AFS)

She has led a team to offer a sustainable design solution that re-establishes hydro-human-phyto interdependencies, building flood resilience, building economic resilience, and offering an inclusive public realm. The proposal received a special recommendation by the jury at the Entekochi competition Organized by the Kochi Municipal Corporation (KMC) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).  The proposal offered a system of integrated light infrastructure, which is mobile, for facilitating integrated vending activity, and buoyant units for flood resilient vending pods. That experience has informed us the way in which the Hex House may be adapted to plug into a network of urban-landscape design as a form of activism that proposes an urban ecology.


Dan Clark, Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro Informal Settlements, Brazil, Dan Clark (AFS)

Another team member and AFS founder, Dan Clark, has researched the relationship between social, political and economic forces in Latin America and the spatial organization of informal settlements in Valparaiso, Chile and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His work was the subject of design studios he led, often collaboratively with a colleague based in Chile, for 4 years in the University of Minnesota's Department of Architecture.

Rocinha Favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dank Clark (AFS)

Dan's research has focused on the network of public and semi-public space located in the dense settlements of Rocinha and Vidigal, two favelas west of Leblon Beach in Rio de Janeiro. These spaces are very modest in size, often not much more than negative or leftover space between buildings— no bigger than necessary to enable access to other parts of the settlement—and evolved organically as the settlements grew. 

Favelas Interior Circulation/ Open Spaces, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dank Clark (AFS)

Circulation routes through this urban fabric are often not “routes” at all, but rather a sequence of overlapping residual spaces. Traversing these neighborhoods requires moving through a series of small, interconnected voids or gaps between buildings. 

Rocinha Roof Tops, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dank Clark (AFS)

Nonetheless, the ability of this urban fabric to accommodate small-scale public activities along passages is exceptional and these have become dynamic social spaces. Larger openings at intersections or other interruptions in the fabric provide openings for light to penetrate deeper into the dense settlements and offer enough space for larger gatherings and small outdoor markets. Rocinha Roof Tops, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dank Clark (AFS)

Rooftops offer a third type and scale of social space. Most of these are private, inhabited by each home's residents. Families migrate up to these spaces as they cool at the end of the day. Many have long views across neighborhoods, a rarity at ground level, and with buildings packed so tightly together residents are able to talk back and forth between rooftops.

Rocinha Figure Ground Study, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Dan Clark (AFS)

Careful study of the variety of scales, degrees of privacy and types of spaces informal settlements have created to support their socially dynamic communities has informed our thinking on how the Hex House may be organized into small groups and neighborhood configurations. These lessons in creating flexible and dynamic public spaces with limited or no resources are especially valuable on projects where funds for public amenities are constrained and careful consideration of the size, scale and proportions of public spaces is the designer's primary resource.

Which dimension of the Challenge does your solution most closely address?
  • Enable mass production of inexpensive and low-carbon housing, including changes to design, materials, and construction methods.
Where our solution team is headquartered or located:
Minneapolis, MN, USA
Our solution's stage of development:
  • Pilot
How many people does your solution currently serve?
One family in the US, and a community school in Hamburg, Germany
Why are you applying to Solve?

1. Financial and Technical Barriers

  • The need to build more prototypes to test, value engineer and distill the design to its most essential parts
  • Research and develop a more sustainable structural insulated panel (SIP) which integrates interior/ exterior finishes, along with providing the required thermal and structural performance thereby eliminating the need to add these finishes later onsite.
  • Redesign attachment details of panels & structure by developing a “click-together” system for easy assembly and disassembly. This requires working very closely with a structural engineer to develop the attachment components and calculate the shear, axial, moment loads which these connections will be designed to resist.
  • Undertake the costly and required testing of the new panel design and click-together attachment methods by testing agencies (ASTM, UL) for structural integrity (seismic & wind resistance) and fire resistance.
  • Vertically integrate the production of the new panels and attachment components described above, by either partnering with a manufacturer to produce the “patented” components or building a production facility of our own, which would also serve as an assembly factory.
  • Build out a robust digital web-based platform that will manage the entire process from design, ordering, production of panels & structure, delivery, and assembly. The platform which will leverage blockchain technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), or mixed reality (MR) which in turn will tap into a network of material manufacturers, transport companies, site assemblers and contractors to streamline the typically fragmented fabrication & construction process. We discuss more specifics of this system in the technology section.

2. Market Barriers

Thanks to a design award and much work to publicize the Hex House system online and other mediums, we have consistently received requests from individuals at every economic level, and groups, companies, and organizations, about pricing for the past five years. 

Since we couldn’t possibly build one-off projects for each of these requests, we decided to simply sell “bare-bones” kits which include the precut structural insulated panel (SIP) walls, floor, roof and the supporting glulam beams, and have them delivered Ready-to-Assemble (RTA). We’ve since automated a response on the Hex House website that responds with the cost and materials list of the kits for single, double, and triple units. The price of a single unit kit, which is now around $40K, however, makes it a challenge to sell them to most interested parties.

We’ve also developed a business strategy whereby we can sell the unit kits to the general public as tiny homes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), off-grid cabins, and glamping cabins that will allow us to leverage the value of scale, bringing the production cost down, and build our organization’s for-profit and nonprofit capacity. This will in turn allow us to sell the units at a further reduced cost directly to disadvantaged communities or organizations serving them.

 As part of this strategy, we have begun to develop a network of ‘conventional’ SIP manufactures across the US to reduce shipping costs and increase our pricing options. We need a great deal of support in this domain, however, to validate, alter, or completely revamp our strategy towards a broader market distribution. We need expert support in business and investment strategy, supply chain, market positioning, technology developers (see core technology section for more details), impact measurement, legal services, and a broad network of experts in various fields ranging from social science to material science, and climate change.

In which of the following areas do you most need partners or support?
  • Technology (e.g. software or hardware, web development/design, data analysis, etc.)
Who is the Team Lead for your solution?
Amro Sallam
More About Your Solution
Your Team
Your Business Model & Funding
Solution Team:
Amro Sallam
Amro Sallam
DIRECTOR
Adam Whipple
Adam Whipple
Board Member
Dan Clark
Dan Clark
Design Director
Altaf Engineer
Altaf Engineer
Architect+Assistant Professor
Yousef Oqleh
Yousef Oqleh
Chairman of the Board at Architects For Society