About
Frank Schooley, Designer | Disaster Shelter

On the day of the 2010 Haiti earthquake, furniture designer Frank Schooley was saddened and moved by the destruction he saw replayed on the news.  It’s been estimated that 3 million people were affected by Haiti’s earthquake with approximately 316,000 souls perishing and 1 million Haitians left homeless. Haiti’s government also estimated 250,000 personal residences and 30,000 commercial buildings were either severely damaged or just collapsed altogether. Over three years later, sadly not much has changed. A traveler to Haiti today will find that the same disastrous construction is being rebuilt in the same dangerous way.

Being an industrious furniture maker, Frank knew he could help. Using the same techniques and materials he originally developed for his eco-friendly furniture line Terrapeg, he immediately starting drafting plans for a disaster relief shelter he calls Shelter In Day.

Learn more about Frank Schoolye's innovative disaster shelter or contact us today.

About Shelter In A Day | Disaster Shelters
Winner of 2013 Aid and International Development Forum (AIDF) "Most Innovative Product Award." Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. Shelter's disaster recovery housing provides safe and secure, simple to construct, green homes for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The disaster shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day. 

Shelter in a Day is made from fiberboard, but not just any fiberboard. We found an exterior grade fiberboard that is waterproof and has a borate treatment throughout that makes it termite and rot resistant. This borate treatment also makes the material more difficult to burn. Fiberboard is a man-made, recycled wood product that has fibers running in every direction which makes it strong in every direction. This absence of a single direction wood grain allows new designs and stronger joints. Wood fiber is the earths’ most basic renewable resource and fiberboard is made from pre-consumer, recycled wood chips, the waste product of lumber production. These chips are heated to break it down into individual fibers which are then pressed mixed with an acrylic binder, and baked strong sheets of various thicknesses.

I never really understood how strong fiberboard was until we ran some basic tests to try to get an idea of the strength of our new Shelter. We use a new, easy to assemble mortise and tenon joint with a locking peg to build our Shelter. We took a single tenon loop (the ‘tab’ of our Tool Free Joint) and hung it in a steel fixture so that weight could be hung from it for testing. This loop has a thickness of one inch and the amount of material around the loop was one inch, resulting in a load bearing cross section of one square inch of fiberboard. Then we added weight to the loop using six of my largest friends sitting on a wood beam and at maximum capacity of the beam, we had over 1,300 pounds of live weight on one square inch of fiberboard, without distortion or failure. It is important to keep in mind that this loading represents the worst case scenario for loading of the joint, a straight pull. In practice, the joints of the Shelter will never have loads applied in a straight line, they will load at various angles where the joint is much, much stronger. There are a 350 or so of these joints in a Shelter. The tool Free Joint and the fiberboard materials are a new technology for building construction.

Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The Shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day. Shelter In A Day is the brainchild of eco-friendly, furniture designer Frank Schooley. These emergency disaster relief shelters provide safe and secure, simple to construct, green housing for those displaced by natural disasters, such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floods. 

The Shelters are a solidly constructed, termite, rust and rot resistant house, with lockable doors and windows.  Homes are crafted from waterproof, recycled wood fiber material and can be easily erected anywhere, in one day.

Our test model disaster relief house (recent picture above) has withstood Florida's elements the last 20 months beautifully.