again i say....it's the IDEA that i illustrate not a recommendation to buy one. but theres free cardboard in a lotta locations and a person can get some design ideas from this to maybe build thier own. heck you can buy a nice doublewide for that amount.

Hi Philip,
I have always been interested in cheap shelter and cardboard is an interesting material. I was wondering from what level of construction were you speaking of ? I know that if emergency shelters were built of cardboard there would probably be some type of protective coating to resist weathering. I think that effectively sealing cardboard from the elements would be difficult, but on the other hand if you were speaking of a type of DIY homeless shelter design then a person could get very creative. If you looked at the structure on the Instructables web site that is posted on this discussion that was very clever...origami, but if you are a homeless person, your cold, tired and hungry what might be a self made shelter technique? I have seen on the web students who were challenged to make a cardboard shelter for homeless awareness then sleep in it for a night, they usually made a sort of triangular tube by bending cardboard into the correct shape. It works but the ends are still open to the weather. I'll bet a lot of times a homeless person couldn't always find a huge cardboard box and during the winter what would such a person do. The Instructables Origami shelter was clever in the sense that it could be collapsed and carried off...this is a great idea! I thought if someone considered it there might be an easier technique on how to construct a very simple DIY cardboard shelter. Perhaps even call it hobo technology. Usually a homeless person doesn't have much in the way of resources for building a cardboard shelter...no tools, no 2" wide tape, no cord or anything, so the challenge is how to come up with a way to build this thing that can be carried away or stashed away for the next night. I think something that completely encloses the occupant and has a way of construction that could use materials cleverly. Perhaps there is a way to join and overlap smaller cardboard pieces like shingles without the aide of tape, string or whatever. Possibly plastic grocery bags could be implemented for a tying together methodology. Why do I ask this? I think it might be an important endeavor for free information to be passed on to homeless people everywhere. Not that I begrudge anyone adequate housing and I hope their circumstances improve but as a survival technique for anyone finding themselves in a bad situation. Do you think this is a good challenge for anyone on here interested? I would gladly discuss it and if we came up with something good we could share it with the masses via the internet. Let me know what you think, it might also be fun. Best Regards, Rick

Jelly, I would very sincerely be interested in that experience you had, living among the homeless. What percentage would you say were druggies vs. handicapped vs. quite normal but honestly down on luck temporarily? In what area was this?

yeah I'm kinda thinking bales of cardboard is a bit of a clunker, at best a bad straw bale that's twice as heavy. But there's no straw bales where I'm working only cardboard ones, lotsa cardboard bales. Certainly three inches of tacked up cardboard then stuccoed wouldn't be terrible only a bit combustable.

Altho mass cardboard forms could fuse with the rest of the discussion on homeless profiles, I see the material to make up many lifelike homeless people forms. If set up in a park in the right way I'm sure they would attract pigeons, drunks, donations, and churchworkers wanting to help. Just like the cardboard bales I'm not sure why I would want to do that tho. Perhaps it would be great advertising for the cardboard buildings. Nevermind that's not going anywhere.

here's a shelter made from cardboard bales, done by students at the Rural Studio in Alabama:

www.cadc.auburn.edu/soa/rura...rdpod.htm