Residential Rebuilding in Rural Haiti Natural Disaster Recovery Strategies

This thesis focuses on an appropriate and applicable way to recover from natural disasters in a place where indigenous resources, building and construction technologies, and manpower are unlike those in developed countries. Overtime, Haiti has suffered from a multitude of natural disasters that have had devastating long-term effects on the safety and health of the country. As a result, it has become apparent that Haitians expanded their housing off of existing relief shelters through improper building techniques. These improper techniques lead to insufficient structural stability of their homes and increased vulnerability to future disasters. The proposal for this thesis focuses on a new disaster recovery process and new transitional houses for rural communities in Haiti. For a situational analysis, the community of Fond-des-Blancs, Haiti has been selected. The concept of the project challenges the existing disaster relief process and the three phases of relief housing; emergency, temporary, to permanent, by creating a new recovery process that incorporates community involvement and two phases of relief housing; emergency to transitional. The final design will demonstrate how housing after emergency solutions can plan for future expansion with strong connections, utilize locally available materials and resources, and empathize with the Haitian construction techniques all through the collaboration between the effected community, local government and aid agencies. The overall goal is to provide Haitians with flexible recovery housing that Haitian families can expand and personalize into a home that is reflective of their needs, traditions, and family dynamics.