Answering to current climate resilience goals, Wellformed-Frames™ arose from the need to face the challenges of an old existing building stock, vulnerable against alternating extreme rainfalls and drought, landslides, severe storms and earthquakes. About 100,000 Romanians are yearly affected by natural disasters, especially those residing in vernacular non-engineered dwellings.

This solution is well-suited for building regional shelters for forced temporary relocations in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Due to the ease of transportation and erection, they can be used in remote locations and even disassembled and reused.

Wellformed-Frames™ is designed for deconstruction and reuse, made of built-up, cold-formed steel elements with corrugated webs, assembled by laser welding. Compared to conventional structural solutions, the innovative system allows for optimal material consumption, it is lightweight and the transportation and erection costs are significantly reduced, minimizing the CO2 emissions. It fits within the broader targets for sustainable and innovative building solutions for climate-resilient and low environmental impact mitigation strategies against natural hazards.

The well-formed (cold-formed steel) phrase is directly linked to the manufacturing process of the structural systems proposed to be used as temporary relocation centers in remote regions affected by extreme climatic events and natural hazards. Besides its purely technical meaning, the Wellformed-Frames naming envisages sound design for post-disaster recovery, aligned with the Building Back Better approach. This project serves as a contributor to enhancing climate resilience in remote residential areas by temporary sheltering communities in safe and sustainable spaces. The solution proposed is designed for new constructions. However, the innovative design might be adapted in order to be used as retrofit solution for increasing resistance against lateral actions and also for gravity loads, such as the case of retrofitting large-span timber structures or masonry structures. In order to provide safe shelter spaces for post-disaster events affecting remote communities in Romania, the proposed structural system made up of cold-formed steel elements with corrugated webs and assembled by laser welding was designed to ensure resistance against any type of extreme loads (winds and earthquake). This system is particularly suitable for temporary relocation centers given its reduced weight and minimal resource consumption, along with the ease of assembly and reuse. Compared to regular steel structures, the increased resistance of Wellformed-Frames proved during the full-scale testing allows it to sustain extreme wind loading, above the code limit for regular storms, with reduced material consumption.

The Wellformed-Frames is a structural system which refers to the structure of a building. It can be used with specific insulation solutions (e.g. Sandwich panels, mineral wool) in order to ensure proper thermal comfort.