Take inspiration from polar bears to create a one-of-a-kind shelter

Students at the Royal Danish Academy drew inspiration from polar bears to design a shelter to help people in distress cope with the harsh snow and ice conditions.

Exploring the North Pole is certainly not for everyone. Usually only experienced and brave adventurers set foot on the journey.

However, due to the extreme weather conditions in the Arctic, no one can predict anything and being stranded is something no one wants to think about.

The tent can help people in need to cope with harsh conditions while waiting for rescue. (Photo: Education Design Award)

But if that happens, a temporary shelter can help the adventurer survive, waiting until he is rescued.

With this in mind, plus inspiration from polar bears' habitats, a group of students from the Royal Danish Academy created a special shelter.

Henry Glogau and Samuel Barratt, two students who led the research, shared: "What would you do if you were stranded in extreme conditions like in the Arctic. No phone signal, no food reserves. little, no contact, sub-zero temperatures. Hypothermia is a serious threat and outside help can take hours.Our innovation helps adventurers more peace of mind, protect their health in the meantime."

According to the team, in this case, snow should be considered a construction material rather than a burden. Similar animals such as polar bears or even Inuit people, also lived in snowy caves.

Visitors to the Northern Lights use tents to shelter from the cold.

The team tested the rescue tent in the Alaska area for a period of 1 month. The tent is made of mylar material, the outer skin design resembles a piece of Japanese origami paper to fix the tent, block the snow and keep the inside warm. The tent can maintain an average temperature difference of 37 degrees Celsius between inside and outside, withstanding areas with up to 40 cm of snowfall. Conventional winter tents only provide space at a temperature difference of 13 degrees Celsius.

Looks uncertain but the creators promise that it will stay intact in blizzard conditions, withstanding a 70 kg person standing on top thanks to the lattice-like fiberglass construction in the inner layer of linkage and deployment simultaneously with the origami shell on the outside.

In the future, emergency shelters will be deployed along checkpoints and hiking routes in areas with cold, low-temperature winters.

The tent design of the team Henry Glogau and Samuel Barratt took home the top prize at the Education Design Award in the Product Design category.