EIGHT New York City architects and designers proudly displayed their new low-cost houses at a show in Manhattan on Thursday, and not a single client was present. Feral cats are like that.

No matter, like all good designers, the ones whose work was on display at “Architects for Animals: Giving Shelter,” a daylong event at the Steelcase showroom in Midtown Manhattan, had taken pains to address the needs of the users.

Consider, for example, the Tin Hut, a structure designed by Kathryn Walton, 42, an architectural project manager and the founder of a nonprofit cat-rescue organization in Brooklyn called the American Street Cat. Ms. Walton’s shelter — which, like the rest, will eventually be placed in an area of the city that is home to a colony of feral cats — consists of 300 recycled aluminum cat-food containers insulated with recycled denim. The base is raised four inches off the ground, to keep the cats high and dry in case of snowdrifts; the mat is springy vinyl. The interior, which has a sort of figure-eight shape, is divided in two.

“We don’t know who sleeps with who,” Ms. Walton said. “But there are some bonded pairs, and this can accommodate up to four cats.”