Better Shelter have been named Design of the Year. The 2016 Beazley Design of the Year award was given to IKEA Foundation's temporary shelter at the Design Museum in London.
These IKEA shelters (known as Better Shelter) are made from flat-pack materials. Flat-pack materials are types of construction or equipment that are placed into boxes and are easy to assemble. Because of the materials used, they can make a lot of shelters, especially for the refugees. This feature is one of the main reasons why they bagged the title.
Not only did it beat the artwork for David Bowie's final album, Better Shelter also outweighed others to the overall prize for "Outstanding contribution towards global issue of population displacement." However, this project was not solely made by IKEA but was done through collaboration with the Better Shelter social enterprise and the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Because of this collaboration, UNHCR was able to make use of this project to help families and people who are victims of war and disasters such as Greece, Iraq, Djibouti, Chad, and Serbia.
Aside from being used as homes for these refugees, these Better Shelter houses are also used as healthcare centers making these projects multi-functional. One comment even stated that Better Shelter is "shows the power of design to respond to the conditions we are in...it is innovative, humanitarian, and implemented [and] has everything that a Beazley Design of the Year should have."
Through the designing process of Better Shelter, the collaboration asked several refugee families to test the shelters so they can find improvements to its design. This ensures that they can offer the best and most efficient living quarters for these victims.
To quote Jonathan Spampinato, Head of Communications at the IKEA Foundation, "We are proud that Better Shelter won this award, but we're even prouder that refugee families and children can have a safer place to call home." The name really does hold true as the projects give these struggling families better and safe shelters.
