The Pallet House: I-Beam Design's Shelter Made From Shipping Pallets

The Pallet House is a small shelter made almost entirely from wooden shipping pallets, designed by the New York architecture practice I-Beam Design. It was first proposed as transitional housing for refugees returning to Kosovo after the 1999 war, and the idea is simple: start with a quick, weather-tight frame of pallets, then let the family turn it into a permanent home over time by filling the walls with earth, rubble or plaster.

The design spread widely online with the claim that it can be built in a single day with basic tools. The reality is a little slower, and the project's story is more interesting than the slogan. Here is how it works, what it was meant for and what anyone tempted to build one should know.

Where the idea came from

I-Beam Design was founded in New York in 1998 by architects Suzan Wines and Azin Valy. In 1999, as hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians who had fled the conflict began going home to find their houses damaged or destroyed, the charity Architecture for Humanity ran an international competition for transitional housing for those returning families.

I-Beam's entry was built from the most ordinary material they could think of. Pallets are made in enormous numbers to carry goods around the world, are often discarded after a few journeys, and turn up wherever aid supplies are delivered. A shelter made from them could, in theory, be built from the very packaging that relief cargo arrived on. The firm says the design received an honourable mention in the competition, and it was later published in Architecture for Humanity's book Design Like You Give a Damn.

The Pallet House prototype, with its pallet walls, raised deck and translucent roof.

How the pallet house is built

The basic shelter measures about 16 by 16 feet, roughly 24 square metres, which is enough for one family. Depending on the version, it uses around 80 to 100 standard pallets. The pallets are nailed or strapped together into wall panels, floor sections and roof elements, then lifted into place. Ordinary timber framing ties them together.

In the first stage, tarpaulins or corrugated plastic sheets go over the frame to keep out rain. Over the following weeks, the hollow spaces inside the pallets can be packed with whatever is to hand: rubble, stone, earth or mud. That adds mass, insulation and strength. Once cement and other materials become available, the walls can be rendered with stucco or plaster and the roof covered with tiles, and the designers say the shelter can become a permanent house within a year or two.

A side view shows how the walls are made of whole pallets stacked edge to edge.


Inside, pallets also form the ceiling, partitions and simple furniture.

For harsher climates the pallets can be pre-assembled with foam insulation, a vapour barrier and plywood or corrugated sheathing before they go up. The plan is modular, so rooms can be added or rearranged and damaged pallets swapped out.

The prototypes on show

The Pallet House has mainly lived in exhibitions rather than refugee camps. It appeared in an online exhibit for the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2000, and a full-size version was built for Casa per Tutti (Housing for All) at the Milan Triennale in 2008, alongside shelter prototypes by architects including Massimiliano Fuksas, MVRDV, Kengo Kuma and Alejandro Aravena. Another prototype stood in a park in downtown Manhattan, and versions were also shown in London.

A prototype assembled indoors, inside a warehouse.


The open interior of an early build, with pallet partitions and a translucent wall panel.

The photos here, all by I-Beam Design, show how the finished prototypes were dressed up with plants, lamps and window boxes. They give a good sense of the space, but they are exhibition pieces: the plain refugee version would look far more basic.

How fast and how cheap, really?

The popular claim that a pallet house goes up in one day is an exaggeration. The engineering charity Engineering for Change, which reviewed the design, lists a build time of about one week for a team of four or five people using hand tools. I-Beam's own figures say the shelter can be built in under a week, with one worker able to pre-assemble around 200 pallets a day.

Cost is also less clear-cut than early articles suggested. I-Beam has offered a set of construction plans for $75, but buyers have to find all the materials themselves, and pallets are only part of the shopping list: framing timber, fixings, roofing and waterproofing add up. Engineering for Change notes that hundreds of plan sets have been sold since 2012, mostly to buyers in North America who used them for sheds and garages rather than emergency homes, and that the design had not been used in a refugee camp or disaster zone.

A partition wall and dining area inside one of the exhibition prototypes.


Light through the translucent roof panels.

Limits and practical questions

The design has real strengths: cheap, familiar, easy-to-handle parts, and a clear path from shelter to house. But it also leaves important questions to the builder.

• Foundations and structure. There is no standard foundation design. I-Beam recommends that a local structural engineer review any build, especially for snow loads and high winds.
• Fire and safety. Dry pallet wood burns readily, and fire safety and security are not addressed in the basic plans.
• Building rules. Anyone building one as a garden room or cabin needs to check local planning and building codes, and may need an architect or engineer.
• Pallet treatment. Pallets used in international trade carry an ISPM 15 stamp. "HT" means the wood was heat-treated; "MB" means it was fumigated with the pesticide methyl bromide. For anything people will live in, heat-treated pallets are the safer choice, and pallets that have carried chemicals or are stained should be avoided.

Transitional housing is also about far more than walls. Clean water, sanitation, land rights and the ability to earn a living matter at least as much as the structure, which is one reason many shelter designs never move beyond the prototype stage.

Why the pallet house still matters

More than twenty-five years after the Kosovo competition, the Pallet House remains one of the best-known examples of designing with salvaged materials. It showed that a home could grow step by step from free, widely available parts and the labour of the people who would live in it, instead of arriving as a finished product from outside.

Visitors at the prototype's entrance.

For home builders the lesson is practical: pallets make good sheds, garden rooms and workshops if you plan the structure, waterproofing and fire safety carefully. For a different take on quick-build garden buildings, see our look at the Allwood Solvalla kit and its assembly claims.

Sources: photos by I-Beam Design: The Pallet House; Engineering for Change: I-Beam Pallet House; Designboom: I-Beam pallet house; ISPM 15 (Wikipedia); story first shared by Viral Forest via Why Don't You Try This.

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