NEW YORK, NY February 06, 2008 —Where would New Yorkers live if a natural disaster destroyed their homes. The city says more than a hundred design teams responded to the question and 10 were selected winners of a contest held by the Office of Emergency Management.

REPORTER: Submissions were received from 30 different countries. Local winner Joseph Lengeling is an architect at Murphy Burnham and Buttrick Architects. He described his firms design as an easy to assemble housing kit that comes inside five simple to transport containers.

LENGELING: We're looking at very light weight materials there's something called a sip panel which is a styrofoam panel. It's very light and one man can handle it. So again it didn't take a lot of skilled people to build these, we are looking at ways so that neighborhoods could do, communities could do it themselves.

REPORTER: The city plans on giving winners $10,00 to further develop their design. The pool of 10 will eventually be narrowed down to 1 winner whose design will be incorporated in the city's Coastal storm plan.