 ParaSITE |
Amid long-running controversy about homeless people living without shelter in urban settings, a design is put forward to use the exhaust of building climate-control systems – and "raise a roof" over the heads of the unprotected.STREET SHELTER BLOWN UPOn any given night in America, anywhere from 700,000 to 2 million people are homeless, according to estimates of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. According to a December, 2000 report of the US Conference of Mayors single men comprise 44 percent of the homeless, single women 13 percent, families with children 36 percent, and unaccompanied minors seven percent. And homelessness is not an American problem but a problem challenging major cities all over the world. Parasite proposes a temporary solution to the problem. The conceptual work of Parasite was done in 1997. It was a time, designer Rakowitz writes in an article on the project, of active moves made against homeless people in some cities of the United States. Benches were being made "bum-proof," warm-air vents were being slanted in some places so that sleeping on them would be impossible, and so on. At times, some cities even opened sprinkler systems to soak homeless citizens in parks. An inflatable igloo-looking shelter, the ParaSITE is meant to attach to the exhaust points of urban buildings' heating and cooling systems – in a sense, making a parasitic relationship to the air needed to inflate the shelter. Though the creation of permanent housing must always be of first priority Parasite propose a possible temporary solution. The paraSITE units in their idle state exist as small, collapsible packages with handles for transport by hand or on one's back. In employing this device, the user must locate the outtake ducts of a building's HVAC system. The intake tube of the collapsed structure is then attached to the vent. The warm air leaving the building then inflates and heats the double membrane structure.
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