Q. What do you get if you cross 200kg of concrete with a life-raft?
A. The building in a bag. An absolutely fantastic idea by two London-based engineers.
The implications of being able to throw half a dozen of these out the back of Hercules (along with a few people to help put them up) could be an amazing lifesaver in disaster relief. The whole assembly is sterile too, so they can be installed as instant field hospitals.
If this was available now, we would buy 10 today.
Monica Castellarnau, program head for Medicins Sans Frontieres in Uganda.
It would be interesting to know what the life-expectancy and strength of the structures is, if they can serve as at least semi-permanent structures (i.e. life of 5+ years) I can see them being adopted for a vast variety of uses.








[...] It would be interesting to know how well it compares to ‘normal’ filtration systems (presumably better, as NASA decided new technology was required), and it would seem that large volumes can be processed without needing elements replacing. It’s ability to convert almost any water to something drinkable should make it an essential for humanitarian aid [...]