THE INSTITUTE'S MISSION

Our mission is to use our diverse pool of experience to improve the design, the production and thus the availability of:

• Cyclone shelters for hurricane prone areas.
• Refugee and medical shelters for harsh environments.
• Temporary housing serving vastly diverse clienteles.
• Low-cost social-housing in difficult physical or social environments.
• Rebuilding programs for disaster zones, flooded areas, tsunami, earthquake and hurricane victim zones. These programs include everything from low-cost social housing to high-end beach resorts.
• Mobile or temporary housing units for health, security and logistic workers.
• Fully equiped headquarters for NGOs and emergency management groups.
  
• Individual housing for special needs in special contexts (More later).

Our aim is to help alleviate the worldwide shortages of these special construction projects. Our basic aim is to use all our skills and experience to make these more economical to produce while infinitely more reliable. To do all of this on a fast-track procurement , design, testing, manufacturing and delivery schedule is our ultimate goal. Ours is a non-profit organization and all of our past and future development ideas are and will be of public domain. To that end our patents will be licensed free of charge to all developing or disaster afflicted nations.

• We will always choose the most expedient and economical methods for our clients to reach their goals, forming their construction professionals, training their building crews, teaching their industrialist to produce our solutions locally.
  
• To that end, after a design is accepted, we create a few prototypes for testing purposes, but also to give the representatives of the client a chance to learn the methods hands-on, living with us for a few weeks until he feels ready to duplicate our tooling and methods in his own country.
  
• When the budget allows, our own multi-skill and multilingual building crews will travel to the client's country to build prototypes while training local construction workers with our techniques.

Our most sincere wish is to see a tenfold increase of the number of available cyclone shelters worldwide before 2012. This is entirely possible if we do it together. As a side benefit, the technology will seep through regular construction worldwide, helping produce a 10,000-fold increase in houses that ARE protected against hurricanes (or typhoons or cylcones). This could actually reduce the number of shelters required for an enlarging population. Before 2020? That's as good a target as any, don't you agree?

Jacques B. Poirier, Director
The Archimede Institute
Cantamar MX

Cantamar Location Of The Institute

We are located less than 50 miles south of the US border in San Diego, having access to 2 container terminals within one hour (Ensenada MX and San Diego CA). We have what is hailed as the best weather year-round in North America. We have a pool of good laborers and we consistently form long-lasting skills with our employees and associates. Our shop is situated next to the toll highway and 400 feet from our office situated on the other side, by the sea. We are building right now an extension to house our material laboratory and eventually our design office and classroom for 12. Our training program are already being promoted to foreign clients and we expect to start training specialized crews this coming winter. Meanwhile our offices are in one part of my private residence and that is working fine for now.

Good results can only be had when the social and physical environments for work are good. We are proud to say that our Cantamar location provides the best possible scenario for the
development of ideas that fit the client's need perfectly. Our proximity to the USA gives quick access to specialists, some materials, high-tech tools and instruments when needed, and quick access to what are reputed to be the best airport in each country. In addition, the friendly atmosphere created by our Mexican co-workers in ideal to help shape the qualities that we expect to develop in our students of construction, of plant management or work site supervision. We are totally happy at the Institute and we will love sharing that creative joy with you. JBP. Dir.