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Shelters are important to humans. It provides protection from hazardous external elements that may harm humans an eventually evolved itself for other uses. Shelters adopts to the living environment of the user or its purpose.

 

Designing and constructing vertical structures are becoming complex as time goes by and people need to know and understand before having one for themselves or for other use.

 

Little knowledge on the subject may entail a big lost to the user or to the building owner to to the builders.

 

This podcast aims to educate and guide the listeners on how to maximize the benefit of knowing this subject.

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“All About Shelters” aims to educate the public about designing and constructing shelters. We will provide some tips, topics and talks about spaces, places, and venues where people are at and a lot more about shelters. 

 

This series will walk us through on the whats, wheres, whens, whos, and the hows in the world of design and construction. It will also touch some processes, applications, and available instruments in regard to designing and constructing vertical structures in any types, kinds, shapes and forms. 

 

All About Shelters has various virtual platforms, from Blog format to Vlog format to Podcast format. These platforms may help us realize, understand and appreciate that shelters play a vital role in human’s existence because shelters act as one of human’s protection or shield against external, natural and physical elements. 

 

Thousands of years ago, human shelters are in caves and some uses leaves, branches, trees, and in some occasions they combined it with dried animal skins to form their shelters.

When humans started to populate the world and needed to expand its territorial boundaries for survival purposes, because of life & family preservations, and hunt for food, among many other reasons, some individuals or groups started to move further away from their original places, especially the younger generations in search for a greener pasture. 

 

During their search for a new territory, they needed places to rest until they reach their final destination, that would suit them to their new frontier. 

 

In the absence of caves in areas where they venture, the best shelter that they would have are trees to properly shelter them against harsh environment or predators. Because of these, they were able to innovate a mobile shelter called tent. Tents can be easily assembled and dismantled. Tents have various sizes and shapes and it could easily be carried to their next stations or destinations. This kind of shelter called tent is widely use by nomads before. But today, we can see a number of modern tent designs in urban areas which we may discuss it in our future episode. 

 

When a new frontier is found, the first agenda of that particular group is to build a more sturdy shelters called houses. Houses are more permanent structures and mostly they are made of indigenous materials that were found in that particular area and some additional materials that they brought in with them from the previous areas where they came from. Some building materials were from plants and trees, others are from muds, clays or stones and other available organic building materials. Some were used independently, some were combined or mixed together with other materials. These make new building materials or new products for building shelters. 

 

Depending on the capacity of that particular group, the design and construction differs from scenario to scenario. These innovations, new designs, new materials, and new methodology paved the way in having new building materials in the market. 

 

Shelters started from a singular shelter and the design grew to a multiple shelters, horizontally or vertically, that would provide the housing requirements for the entire citizen of that group or community.

 

Shelters has developed into many variances from just a private shelters use to a Multi-use shelters. We have shelters for Government uses, Mid places and hotels are designed to shelter transients and traders, Market places and business establishments are for commercial uses and some institutions. 

 

But sadly, shelters are becoming to be too expensive for typical people to have a descent shelters. A descent typical shelters would eat up a life time savings of a typical family. These are just one of those many reasons why stakeholders like Government sectors, professional sectors, business sectors and private sectors are putting their brains together to come up an offering to the public sectors a formula that would address this never ending challenges about affordable shelter. We will be discussing this in our future episode.

 

We will be touching some best practices and sensitive scenarios so that the public may be aware on those scenarios and eventually be benefitted from the series and episodes we have at All About Shelters,

 

The talks for shelters is an interesting subject. There will always be new designs, new products, new methods on how to design and construct shelters and new breed of participants or stakeholders in the build environment. We will be digging those deeply in the upcoming series and episodes of All About Shelter. Anyway, this is just our maiden episode. 

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One afternoon, while I was discussing a project with a small group of friends, someone from that group tossed a question, “What are the different kinds of shelters?” I thought it was a simple question to answer but surprisingly it took us four(4) hours of exchanges of thoughts and ideas that brought series of questions and follow up questions and discussions from our answers. 

 

Basing it from the discussion I had with that small group and believing that this question may have a snow ball effect if I start sharing it with others.  So I started to write this article and started some Podcasts and VLOGs on this subject. I believe that even an ordinary person could say something about this topic. And might might stir up some great or innovative ideas from the public because we all have experience living in it or used it in various ways.

 

In this article, I tried to contain my presentation in a layman’s point of view, for us to be able to walk in this together. And maybe we all are able to contribute on the subject matter and learn from it. If you have some thoughts or ideas on the subject, you are welcome to contribute your inputs and join us in this discussion. You may email us at allaboutsheltersph@gmail.com or send a comment at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyYEJtQG_jcNhT4Qv3Nv6cQ. 

 

This series, entitled Understanding Shelters will be done by parts because of the depth of the subject. I will first give the basic data, followed by introducing the major categories with some general key points, then moving deeper on the subject as we go along. In this series, we will be focusing mainly on shelters for human habitations. 

 

Shelters serve as man´s protection against harsh environment and shelters are essential component in man's existence. Shelter may act as man´s security and man’s pride to a certain extent to some individuals.

 

To have a common understanding on our topic about shelter, let me first define the word "Shelter". Shelter is an external structure that may protect humans, animals, and other living species, including non-living species from external and natural elements. Having that as our basis we may now categorized it as per usage, kinds, and types.

 

There are two (2) major categories we can set for shelters, namely; Shelters for Living Species and Shelters for Non-Living Species. The Shelters for Living Species are structures that houses human habitations, as well as animals, aquatic, birds, plants, trees, and other living species. While Shelters for Non-Living Species are structures that can store all kinds of goods, products, materials, and other non-living species.

 

Shelters for Living Species and Shelters for Non-Living Species may further be subdivided based on their usage. Two (2) subcategories may be  applied under Shelters for Living Species, namely, Shelters for Human Habitation and Shelters for Non-Human Habitation. 

 

Shelters for Human Habitations already suggest that it will be for human's usage. While the Shelters for Non-Human Habitations are mainly for non human usage.

 

Under Shelters for Human Habitations, we can identify three subdivision based on its usage, such as Shelters for Private Use, Shelters for Private-Public use and Shelters for Public Use.

 

While the Shelters for Non-Human Habitation the subdivision will the will be divided as to who are going to use it. Both subdivisions will be expound it in our future articles. 

 

The second major category is focus on Shelters for Non-Living Species. This means it will be primarily for storage purposes, which again we will discuss it in our future articles.

 

In summary,

The 2 Main Categories and their subdivisions.

  1. Shelters for Living Species

    1. Shelters for Human Habitations

    2. Shelters for Non Human Habitations

  2. Shelters for Non-Living Species

    1. Shelters for Products & Produce

    2. Shelters for Goods & Materials

 

We will continue to expound on the subject in the next succeeding articles.

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