ELA HOLIDAY ASSIGNMENT
TAKE-HOME TEST (10 points = 100%)
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DIRECTIONS:
ANCHOR TEXT: “An Ingenious Home Built to Battle Tornadoes”
 Closely read the passage.
 Annotate the passage.
 Complete the Context Clues Activity using the words in the passage.
 Answer the multiple-choice questions and RACE the text-dependent questions.
CONTEXT CLUES ACTIVITY
WORD
CONTEXT CLUES
MY OWN DEFINITION
1. dismantle (¶1)
2. debris (¶1)
3. mementos (¶1)
4. resiliency (¶3)
5. replicated (¶7)
MULTIPLE-CHOICE QUESTIONS
1. Read this statement from the passage.
“A tornado can dismantle the typical wood-frame house in four seconds.”
The word dismantle means –
a. wash away
b. break apart
c. cool down
d. turn around
2. Which sentence best supports the idea that architects capture the balance between safety and
livability in designing homes that can battle tornadoes?
a. “If you made a perfect earthquake structure, it would be a bunker with 24-inch walls and one
small steel door for you to get in.”
b. “The project is aiming to actually construct the winning designs, one selected for each setting, with
the help of volunteer labor and donated funds and materials.”
c. “Q4 Architects created a safe space within a home instead of a shelter underneath it, a kind of
house inside of a house.”
d. “The genius of this idea is that it would be significantly more expensive to build out the same
tornado precautions for the entire home.”
3. According to the passage, which two key ideas should architects consider in building tornado-proof
homes?
a. space and function
c. resiliency and livability
b. heavy-duty door and access to backup systems
d. tornado cellars and basements
4. Q4 architects think that creation of a house inside of a house is an idea that can be replicated
anywhere in the tornado alley. What is the author suggesting when he used the word replicated?
a. Making the design strong to withstand a tornado
b. Making the design in a way that it can be reproduced
c. Making the design affordable for everyone in the tornado alley
d. Making the design huge like a bunker
TEXT-DEPENDENT QUESTIONS: Use RACE to answer these questions. (2 points each)
1. Explain why it is a big challenge for architects to design tornado-proof homes?
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2. One conclusion that can be drawn from the passage is that tornado-proof homes do not have to look
like bunkers. They can be designed to be a place people would actually want to live in. What pieces of
evidence from the passage would you select to support this conclusion?
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3. Describe a CORE house. Why does the author say that it is a genius idea?
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An Ingenious Home Built to Battle Tornadoes
How to design disaster-proof places where people would actually want to live
Q4 Architects
A tornado can dismantle the typical wood-frame house in four seconds. In the first second, it begins shattering
the windows and scattering debris. Then air rushes in past the broken windows, under doors and through any
other openings, inflating the house and popping the roof off. In the third second, without a roof, the walls
collapse. By second four, anything inside the home – mementos, books, furniture – is now blowing away.
The speed of so much destruction poses a difficult design question for communities like Joplin, Missouri, that
have been wrecked by tornadoes: How do you design a tornado-proof home that doesn't feel like a bunker on
good days, outside of those four terrible seconds?
How do you design a tornado-proof home that doesn't feel like a bunker on good days?
That tension between resiliency and livability is inherent in how we prepare for all kinds of disasters: morefrequent hurricanes, flooding, earthquakes.
"If you made a perfect earthquake structure, it would be a bunker with 24-inch walls and one small steel door
for you to get in," says California-based architect Michael Willis. That structure would be based on the
empirical measurements of structural engineers. "You could design it to be perfectly resistant. But it would not
be a place you’d want to live."
The challenge of designing after disasters – or with disasters in mind – is to balance both, to build safe places
where people might actually be willing to live.
This was the task behind the "Designing Recovery" competition sponsored by the American Institute of
Architects, Make it Right, the St. Bernard Project and Architecture for Humanity, for which the winners have
been announced today (Willis was the chair of the jury). Since June, architects have been trying to model new
housing solutions for communities that have experienced three very different disasters: the 2011 tornado in
Joplin, Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, and Superstorm Sandy in New York. The project is aiming to
actually construct the winning designs, one selected for each setting, with the help of volunteer labor and
donated funds and materials.
In the face of rising waters, the winning New York and New Orleans designs – from Sustainable.TO
Architecture and Billing and GOATstudio LLP – both elevated their energy-efficient homes.
Sustainable.TO Architecture and Billion new york design (left), and GOATstudio LLP New Orleans design
(right).
But particularly intriguing is the Joplin winner, shown at top, which faced a very different problem in a part of
the country where the geology makes it impossible to build tornado cellars or basements.
Q4 Architects created a safe space within a home instead of a shelter underneath it, a kind of house inside of a
house. The result is an idea that could be replicated anywhere in tornado alley: A highly indestructible 600
square-foot core of concrete masonry, hurricane shutters and tornado doors where a family could survive a
tornado and live beyond it, with several more flexible (and affordable) rooms wrapped around it.
Q4 Architects
In the above floor plan, the family still gets its front porch (No. 7), light-filled great room (No. 5), an airy
breezeway and bedroom wing. But, with a tornado approaching, residents can retreat into the core with its
Murphy beds, kitchen, bathroom, access to backup systems and heavy-duty tornado doors.
"It’s going to do it’s best to fight the tornado," Elizabeth George, a senior architect with Q4 Architects, says of
the home's "CORE." "Part of your house might get torn away, but the most important parts of the house are
safe. After the disaster, everything is not lost. You’re able to keep the most valuable things, which are the
people, the functions of the house, and maybe your valuables."
The genius of this idea is that it would be significantly more expensive to build out the same tornado
precautions for the entire home (the CORE house, as with each of these projects, is meant to be constructed for
under $50,000). And, chances are, you wouldn't want to live there. Instead, houses of numerous styles could be
wrapped around such a safe space.
The idea captures that balance between resiliency and livability that should be built into how we think about
preparing for any natural disaster in a future where they may strike even more frequently.