MIT art students transform FEMA trailer into green machine

Posted on Jun 13, 2009 by Susie Collins in Blog, Home & Garden, Media/Videos, Susie Collins

Students transform FEMA trailer into a permaculture model on wheels.

Faculty and students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Visual Arts Program transformed a surplus FEMA trailer into a “green” mobile composting center with vertical gardens, rainwater catchment system, permaculture library, and indoor multipurpose space. The trailer has been dubbed the “Armadillo” for its ribbed retractable shell.

This project is a marvelous political statement, following all the health problems reported by occupants of the trailers used in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many occupants complained of developing myriad illnesses, including Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.

On June 18, the Armadillo will embark on a national tour to its final destination in Pasadena, CA, where it will serve as a community digital lab, community garden, and composting center.

“The Armadillo is both a practical tool and a metaphor for how disaster can be transformed into a tool for environmental and community change.” – Jae Rhim Lee, Visiting Lecturer, MIT Visual Arts Program and Director of the MIT FEMA Trailer Project.

The FEMA trailers have been tied to a host of issues surrounding indoor air quality health concerns, mental health problems in trailer parks, lack of affordable housing, and disaster management. MIT students studied these issues and researched the environmental, political, and social history of the trailers under the direction of Jae Rhim Lee, an artist, permaculture designer and former consultant to the City of New Orleans Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Development.

Students were then challenged to apply permaculture (a whole systems sustainable design approach) and environmental justice principles to the redesign and transformation of a single FEMA trailer into a model of urban sustainability and community change.

In Sept. last year, I wrote about a survey endorsed by Sierra Club Delta Chapter, The Chemical Sensitivity Foundation, and The National Coalition for the Homeless that found many Katrina survivors very ill, with children suffering the most. Toxic FEMA trailers were cited as a major cause.

In July, I wrote about FEMA formaldehyde: The good, the bad and the ugly.

Link to more info, photos and a video about the Armadillo Project.