Resilience by design: emergency architecture, testing and the ecology of aid (1970–1980)

Since the late 2000s, the humanitarian sector has witnessed what scholars have described as an ‘innovation turn’ in response to what humanitarian innovators conceive as the field’s inefficient, backwards-looking and top-down inner workings. In this context, aid actors have increasingly embraced design methodologies in pursuing creative, participatory and human-centred responses to humanitarian crises. However, this turn overshadows a longer history of intersections between design and humanitarian governance. This article contributes to filling this gap by tracing how design and innovation met in the field of post-disaster shelters in the 1970s. Echoing today’s ‘innovation turn’, the period witnessed widespread efforts to innovate cross-border disaster relief interventions amongst international aid actors. Examining the development, implementation and aftermath of the A-frame shelter, a post-disaster housing solution developed by Carnegie Mellon University and the consultancy Intertect between 1974 and 1977, the article argues that the project announced a new understanding of the role of design responses to disasters, that of a practice that through participative and iterative problem-solving methods aimed to produce mobile protocols capable of rendering local populations more resilient to environmental catastrophes. The article thereby exposes and critically examines the longstanding intersections between humanitarian aid, design and early resilience thinking.