In September 2005, ASF-UK held a summer school at the Eden Project in Cornwall involving 35 students and professionals. The theme of post disaster shelter and settlement engaged the participants’ creative skills and ideas with key global issues: the environment, poverty and human rights. It is estimated that one-sixth of the world’s population live in informal settlements (2006). With this in mind the participants considered the role of the architect and how the built environment might become sustainable. They explored participatory practice and dialogue with vulnerable people in order to sustain livelihoods, resources, cultures and communities. Plans made in the classroom were superseded by the need for immediate innovation as students set about building shelters in a day to sleep in, with materials sourced from the Eden Project’s waste management team. The process gave the group an insight into how people innovate under extreme limitations on time, space and resources to fulfill the basic needs of shelter.