The humanitarian shelter built by university students on show at Fort St Elmo.

FIMBank unveiled the prototype of a humanitarian shelter designed and developed by a group of University of Malta third-year students from the Faculty for the Built Environment reading for a BSc (Built Environment Studies), as part of their studies to become architects.

The shelter, nicknamed ‘Speranza’, was on display inside Fort St Elmo as part of Malta Design Week.

FIMBank president Margrith Lüstchg-Emmenegger said millions of people were affected by natural or man-made disasters every year and according to international relief organisations, the displacement of people would continue to increase at a faster rate.

“I believe this will lead to an unprecedented need for assistance that could overwhelm the world’s current humanitarian capacity. This is a great challenge and that is why the bank decided to provide the financial support to build Speranza,” she added.

Alex Torpiano, Dean of the Faculty for the Built Environment, explained that a healthy human being could survive for weeks without food and days without water, but in many cases only hours without proper shelter from the elements.

Coming up with tangible and valuable improvements to existing shelter solutions was the key objective. This was an opportunity to show that architects can come up with solutions to global humanitarian challenges.

FIMBank partnered with the University and the 808 Foundation, whereby architects Chris Briffa and Sandro Valentino took on the role of lead project managers and design tutors to the students.

Briffa, renowned locally for promoting architectural design awareness, is a design tutor at the University. The brief for this project was to design a simple, sustainable and well-insulated unit by introducing low-cost improvements to existing technology, effectively creating an enhanced shelter solution.

Briffa and Valentino led a team of 15 students to work on this project with the aim of combining the elements of research and design with this core humanitarian objective.

The students were Justin Mizzi, Julian Vassallo, Katrina Gauci, Samuel Bonello, Andrea Zerafa, Jonathan Avellino, Ryan Saliba, Bobby Pace, Paula Grech, Sacha Cutajar, Rene Fava, Martha Borg, Neal Vella, Stacy Rapa and Matthew Muscat.