Project Description

#3137

BODY SHELTER

Goals
•Provides peace of mind
•Promotes travel
•Allows you to live with risk
•Provides protection
•Offers temporary relief in emergency

BODY SHELTER is a multi-functional, protective jacket providing the peace of mind necessary to promote mobility, unrestricted travel and a spirit of internationalism in a terrorised world. It addresses the current climate of terrorism and the American reaction of isolationism and insularity. It asks how we can maintain an openness to exchange and exploration while dealing with real and perceived risks. Acknowledging the long precedent of using clothing as equipment, it proposes a design that inspires confidence by offering a degree of protection and temporary relief in any number of disaster or emergency scenarios.

Criteria
•Portable
•Lightweight
•Multi-functional
•Easily accessible

Using the umbrella as inspiration, my aim was to design a tool that acknowledged the risk of terrorism without giving in to it. When you think it’s going to rain, you take an umbrella. In a hurricane or a bad storm, an umbrella is sometimes useless. But it can provide the five minutes of shelter needed to find a cafe or an awning. BODY SHELTER is designed to work similarly. Rather than avoid risk altogether, it allows you to choose an acceptable level of risk. Stated otherwise, it gives you some insurance.

Features
•Acts as barrier
•Useful in medical emergency
•Helps identify type of risk
•Provides instructions

Materials are crucial. The jacket must act as a protective barrier from fire, radioactive particles, explosive matter, and chemical/biological agents. Because of the nature of terrorist threat, the jacket needs a first aid component. First aid elements are best utilised when all together in a kit, which is removable from the jacket itself. The tri-fold emergency kit velcros into the inside front panel of the jacket. It is removable for easy use. Weighing 2 pounds, it folds up flat. It includes survival gear, tools and first aid. Both the water purification tablets and KI pills come in sealed containers. Inside the containers are simple instructions for use and dosage.

Because detection is often crucial to avoiding injury during a terrorist attack, the jacket should both detect and identify risk, in order to help you make the best decision based on the situation. The jacket provides for chemical and nuclear detection, with protection from every kind of risk, from explosion to biological attack.

These kinds of attacks are not typical events, and so the jacket should provide instructions for use. It needs an easy-to-understand graphics system that people can grasp in a second. The graphics system employed on the jacket makes it clear what tools are where. These labels are phosphorescent and readable in the dark. Three categories of icons distinguish the objects and tools contained in the jacket: Necessities (food, water, light); Threats (nuclear, chemical, explosive); and Protection (mask, meds, first aid).

Since the jacket needs to act as a protective barrier, the fabric is very important. The external shell is impermeable to most substances, while still being comfortable to touch and move about it. It is extremely tear-resistant, in order to stand up to flying particles or objects. It is also abrasion-resistant, to protect in case of falls. Most closures are velcro, chosen because it is easier to use than zippers and other fasteners, particularly when in the dark or with an impaired range of movement. The features and tools fit seamlessly; it doesn’t weigh more than the average high performance jacket, nor does it have bulky appendages or attract attention.