Abeer Spikily has been working on production of her unique pop up solar power tents that also filter water with hopes to help refugees. via theglobeandmail

Jordanian-Canadian architect Abeer Seikaly is asking why: Why do we house the displaced, their numbers swelling so quickly, in dysfunctional, poorly designed shelters? How hard can it be, she wants to know, to make them sustainable and smart – and beautiful?

Seikaly has designed a temporary tent made of what she calls “structural fabric,” woven together in a pattern that allows it to fold down flat, or pop out the way a circular tissue-paper ornament does. The tents are domes that can be open for ventilation in summer or closed against cold or rain. They have a water storage basin at the top, and she is working with industrial designers on a fabric that would allow the material itself to passively collect solar radiation and fuel a battery as a power source for each unit….

She was already interested in Bedouin weaving, in her ancestors’ nomadic past, she said, when the Lexus contest design brief – calling for a solution to a problem in daily life – inspired her to try to apply a reconception of fabric to refugee needs.

“A home is not a place where we happen to live, it’s a place where we come into being, where we are able to express ourselves. It’s a refuge from the outside world.”