Quickly securing livable conditions in evacuation shelters after disasters is an urgent challenge for many countries. A Japan-developed temporary house with a design that defies architectural conventions is attracting attention as a solution to this problem. The “Instant House” offers an innovative form of shelter that provides disaster victims with rapidly deployable homes.

 
Improving living conditions in evacuation shelters where people take refuge after earthquakes and other disasters is a challenge faced by calamity-stricken areas worldwide. Japan, a leading “disaster-prone nation” that accounts for 18.5% of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or higher, is no exception. Stress and the spread of infectious diseases are particularly problematic in typical shelters. In recent years, partitions and other measures have been introduced to secure a certain degree of private space, but prolonged stays can affect victims’ physical and mental health. Another challenge is that temporary housing often takes considerable time to construct.

One solution to these problems is the “Instant House” invented by KITAGAWA Keisuke, professor at the Nagoya Institute of Technology and president of LIFULL ArchiTech Co., Ltd. The house’s name reflects the origin of the word “instant” in the Latin verb instare, “to stand near,” highlighting the comfort and security the shelter offers its occupants, as well as the speed with which it can be erected. There are outdoor Instant Houses made from the membrane material used in tents, and indoor Instant Houses made from cardboard, both of which can be set up by a single person without assembly instructions.

The outdoor version, which can accommodate as many as 10 people, takes one to two hours to complete, using a blower to inflate a dome-shaped membrane with air, then spraying polyurethane foam on the interior wall. The indoor version, which protects privacy in spaces like gymnasiums and isolates evacuees who may have infectious diseases, can be completed in about 15 minutes, even by a child working alone.

Kitagawa explains the characteristics of this new type of architecture: “Both the outdoor and indoor versions of the Instant House hold large amounts of air and are well insulated, minimizing the effect of the air outside. This ensures a comfortable living space that solves common evacuation shelter problems like heat, cold, sanitation, and privacy.”
 
Kitagawa Keisuke and Yamanaka Tsukasa standing inside a furnished Instant House

LIFULL ArchiTech Co., Ltd. President KITAGAWA Keisuke (left) and COO YAMANAKA Tsukasa (right) stand inside an Instant House. The prestressed structure is erected by inflating a membrane with a blower to create tension, then spraying insulation material from the inside. Japanese and international PCT patents have already been obtained for the design.

 
An Instant House with a wooden door and round side window

Windows and doors can be installed in an Instant House as long as certain conditions are met. The height of the house is approximately 4.3 meters. It has a service life of about 10 years and is light enough to be carried by five or six adults.

 
The impetus for Kitagawa’s invention was the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011. While inspecting a gymnasium that served as an evacuation shelter in the tsunami-struck city of Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, he was approached by some local elementary school students:

“The children asked me, ‘Why does it take three to six months to build a temporary house? If you’re a university professor, why can’t you build it next week?’ I was determined to come up with something in response to that earnest request. First, in order to figure out why conventional building methods take so much time and money, I started listing some problematic aspects of ‘common-sense architecture’—heavy weight, high construction costs, many parts, large crews... Next, I applied antonyms to all 40 of those factors—light weight, low construction costs, few parts, made by one person—and thought about structures and materials that would satisfy as many conditions as possible that were the exact opposite of the conventional wisdom.”

One day, when Kitagawa put on a down jacket that had been rolled up small in his backpack, he had a flash of inspiration: “What all 40 antonyms share in common is air!” Air is everywhere, and if you collect it on-site and inflate it, you can create space. The raw material costs nothing, and it has excellent insulation properties. Over the next five and a half years, Kitagawa created around 150 prototypes of his shelter, some large enough for people to enter. After much trial and error, the Instant House was born in 2016.

LIFULL, a Japanese real estate information services company that supported the concept of the Instant House, proposed an industry-academia collaboration with Kitagawa, and this led to the founding of LIFULL ArchiTech in 2019. Since then, the possibilities for the Instant House have expanded to include support for disaster-stricken areas overseas, regional revitalization demonstration experiments utilizing idle land in rural Japan, and sales of single-person Instant Shelters based on the same Instant House technology. YAMANAKA Tsukasa, COO of the company, cites its achievements abroad: “We delivered outdoor Instant Houses to disaster areas following the Turkey-Syria and Morocco earthquakes in 2023 and the 2025 Myanmar earthquake. The houses’ comfort and their ease of assembly, without requiring special skills, have earned high praise wherever they’ve been put to use.”

In Japan, the Noto Earthquake, which occurred on New Year’s Day 2024, provided an opportunity to demonstrate the Instant House’s value in an emergency. Immediately after the quake, Kitagawa rushed to the stricken area by car with 10 cardboard indoor Instant Houses and installed them at an evacuation shelter in Wajima. Media coverage of this effort triggered an outpouring of donations exceeding 100 million yen to the Nagoya Institute of Technology. The donations helped fund the mass production of Instant Houses, ultimately leading to the installation of some 250 outdoor units and 1,250 indoor units at evacuation shelters throughout the Noto region.
 
Six people standing in front of an Instant House erected in Morocco after the September 2023 earthquake

An Instant House erected in Morocco shortly after the September 2023 earthquake. (Image courtesy of Kitagawa Keisuke)

 
Indoor versions of the Instant House made from cardboard inside a school gym

Immediately after the Noto Earthquake of 2024, Kitagawa installed 10 indoor Instant Houses at an evacuation shelter set up in the gym at Wajima Middle School. The houses can be connected according to the needs of the occupants. (Image courtesy of Kitagawa Keisuke)

 
Kitagawa is now working on the next generation of Instant Houses. Specifically, he is tackling the construction of units that help reduce the human impact on the environment. Among these are “edible” types using lightweight insulation materials made from factory-discarded snack foods and starch glue, and others that use waste fabric, newspapers, and Japanese washi paper as membrane materials.

“In addition to natural disaster victims, it is said that over 123 million people worldwide are displaced from their homes due to conflict and persecution,” Kitagawa says. “I intend to do everything in my power to deliver Instant Houses to as many people as possible.”

 
Kitagawa Keisuke standing in front of two white Instant Houses.

Professor Kitagawa stands in front of two Instant Houses on the Nagoya Institute of Technology campus.