Whether people are fleeing armed conflict or extreme weather, time is of the essence when it comes to setting up temporary shelters and getting people to safety.
Simply put — when disaster strikes, every second counts.
It’s those precious seconds that concerned mechanical engineer Masoud Rais-Rohani the most when he began designing deployable emergency shelters at the University of Maine.
“How can we make it quick? How can we make it so it becomes a shelter in a matter of minutes, not hours?” Rais-Rohani recalls asking himself, in an interview with News Center Maine.
When he first began analyzing potential designs for temporary housing in 2018, the engineer tapped graduate student Anthony Verzoni for help.
Then, Rais-Rohani and Verzoni found inspiration in an unlikely place: origami.
“The results show that compound folding patterns can be accommodated in flat-foldable, thick-walled, origami-inspired shelter concepts that act mostly or fully as a single-degree-of-freedom system with maximum connectivity of the shelter panels,” the team wrote in their study, which was published in Engineering Structures in December 2022.
“Deployable shelters have many applications, including disaster relief and temporary housing,” they continued. “The ability to transport and rapidly erect such shelters is an important design consideration.”
To show off their prototypes, the team welcomed News Center Maine journalist Sam Olsen into their office at the University of Maine in 2023.
“Ultimately what needs to happen is that when it sets up completely, all of these folds need to be rigidized so that it won’t collapse onto itself,” Rais-Rohani said — pointing to their colorful sketches, which displayed how the origami shelters could be scaled up and down in size.
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“Both the shelter height and roof geometry can be modified as shown,” the team wrote in their study.
“The first modification allows the roof to be extended and elevated to a height that is taller than the front wall. A gable roof and an angled (shed) roof could also be incorporated into the shelter design.”
As of 2025, there were no updates available on the team’s deployable origami shelters, but Rais-Rohani and Verzoni seemed content to play the long game.
“The ultimate goal is to see it mass produced, mainly for humanitarian relief operations,” Rais-Rohani said, adding that their eyes were on FEMA.
“It’s nice to do something with the humanitarian benefit — and hopefully disaster relief — and helping people in need,” Verzoni expressed.
Header images via The University of Maine / Masoud Rais-Rohani and Anthony Verzoni
