Mississippi State University fourth-year architecture students Zachary Kelly and Tyler Scott and group members Patrick Greene and Assistant Professor Jacob Gines presented the Friday Morning Serial titled “Resilience in Mass Timber: A Proposal for a Disaster Relief House” at the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio in Biloxi on Fri., May 4.
In their words:
“The Mississippi Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to hurricanes and severe weather systems affecting the populated coastlines. Disaster relief housing that is deployed to impacted areas must be designed to address the long-term issues of durability, mobility, constructability, and quality of life. Over the past couple of decades, Mass Timber building systems have emerged in Europe and North America as the construction technology of the future, and it is proving to be an extremely viable and sustainable alternative to our current construction technologies. Utilizing innovative engineered wood products like Cross Laminated Timber (CLT), wood buildings are filling our skylines, addressing issues of public safety, and inspiring a generation of architects to think differently about the way we build and what we build with. Resilient Mass Timber House (RMTH) no. 01 is designed to be prefabricated and mounted on a chassis for easy deployment to the building lot.Because of this, RMTH no. 01 is ideal as a disaster relief house – deployable to affected communities in the region.The interior is designed to be simple and contemporary in layout, function, and aesthetic. The project team collaborated with academic partners from the MSU Department of Sustainable Bioproducts, industry partners at the Mississippi Forestry Association, and the Gulf Coast Community Design Studio.”