- JRH Engineering & Environmental Services, Inc.
The ‘Building in a Bag’
Inflatable concrete shelters are a good fit across a broad spectrum of applications.
By Thomas Goodall
It is hard to imagine a self-supporting structure made of fabric, which can last for over ten years in varying conditions around the world, but they do exist. The shelters can be erected anywhere from war zones to disaster areas. They were invented by two university students back in 2005.
William Crawford and Peter Brewin were studying Industrial Design Engineering at Imperial College London and Royal College of Arts when the two students came up with the idea of creating a fabric which could act like a plaster cast, creating a solid material which could be used to create inflatable, semi-permanent shelters for disaster relief. Having finished university, they continued to work on the concept and formed the company Concrete Canvas Ltd.
