Four Dutch students start design of new toilet shelter for rural Cambodia

A team of four industrial design students of the Delft Technical University, travelled to Cambodia as part of a five month graduation project to design a toilet shelter. The Team Anticipate wants to improve the latrines in rural Cambodia by designing an affordable and accessible shelter. The team consists of Fleur Derks, Marijn Goemans, Hella Hekkelman and Hui-Hsuan Wang.

The Joint Master Project (JMP) is the final design project prior to graduation and is completed in the fifth year of the Industrial Design Engineering (IDE) education. The independent project group consists of four students, representing the three IDE Masters programs

Durable shelter too expensive
The situation in Cambodia is striking: only 20% of the rural population has access to proper sanitation. Recently, latrines have become more easily available for the rural consumers, but many poor households lack the ability to buy a durable shelter, to provide privacy and protection to the user.

As a result, many people postpone their latrine purchase and stick to the practice of open defecation.

Field research
Team Anticipate will try to tackle this problem, by designing a new toilet shelter, that can be locally produced and is affordable for the consumers. During the coming months, the students will do field research in Cambodia, where they will also build and test a prototype.

The project is in collaboration with SaniShop, a small micro-franchise company that produces and sells low-cost latrines to rural households.

Follow the field research by Team Anticipate on their weblog.

More information
Team Anticipate
p/o Delft University of Technology
Faculty of Industrial Design
Delft, the Netherlands
team.anticipate@gmail.com
www.teamanticipate.nl