Developers often make it sound as though their latest LEED platinum office building will single-handedly reverse climate change. The unfortunate reality is that they could spend a lifetime designing and building all of their work to meet the highest environmental standards, but it wouldn’t fix the problem. The planet will grow hotter, the seas will rise, and storms will intensify. A century of burning fossil fuels has baked global warming into the atmosphere for our lifetime.
The concept of low-tech architecture recognizes the impact of carbon-intensive technologies and building practices and proposes an alternative: a rediscovery of practical, rational, locally adapted solutions that count on smart design strategies instead of energy-intensive devices to ensure a safe, comfortable living environment. Far from being a regressive approach, the term remains open to innovations but seeks to rebalance the industry’s reliance on mechanization. It thus favors an architecture of fewer components, minimized dependence on high-tech solutions, and a preference for low-embodied carbon materials.
Shigeru Ban Architects, in collaboration with The Glass House and The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union, have just revealed “Shigeru Ban: The Paper Log House at The Glass House.” This collaborative installation opened on April 15th and is on display until December 15th, 2024, welcoming more than 13,000 annual visitors. This year, students from The Cooper Union actively participated in the making of this structure as part of the university’s Building Technology Course.
As we reflect on the tumultuous events of 2023, it becomes evident that the challenges posed by changing environmental conditions have left an indelible mark on communities worldwide. In response, architects and urban planners have set out, searching for the ways in which their actions can help create safer environments for communities worldwide, responding with both fast-to-deploy emergency architectures and long-term strategies to build resilience and mitigate risks.
Beyond merely responding to events like the devastating earthquakes in Turkey, Syria, and Morocco, or the widespread flooding in Libya or Pakistan, professionals are attempting to take proactive approaches, developing strategies that extend from predictive modeling to the application of re-naturalizing techniques or the ongoing research into the physics of safer and resilient structures.
Pono Colony - August 2022. Image Courtesy of Heritage Foundation of Pakistan
Following the extreme floods that affected Pakistan in 2022, architect Yasmeen Lari the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan pledged to help build one million resilient houses in the country. In 2022, 33 million people have been displaced, and an estimated 500,000 houses have been destroyed or severely damaged. In September 2022, Lari’s NGO launched a target program to start rebuilding and to help communities protect themselves against future disasters. The program is built on Lari’s expertise in working with the communities and employing vernacular and local building materials to achieve resilient and sustainable structures. According to the Heritage Foundation of Pakistan, one-third of the goal has already been reached.
The terms resiliency and sustainability, although similar in meaning, refer to different design approaches in the context of architecture and cities. Sustainability involves the preservation of natural resources to uphold ecological equilibrium, while resiliency entails the ability to rebound, adapt, and persist in moments of adversity. These concepts greatly influence and complement each other, especially in cases of designing disaster-resilient buildings. Conventional design processes relating to resilient infrastructure have been based on principles of structural robustness and integrity as a measure against anticipated natural disasters. However, sustainable resiliency points at the opportunity of reinforcing buildings by embedding them in biological and ecological systems.
As the world grapples with the effects of climate change, natural disasters like flooding, and the spread of incontrollable wildfires are increasingly threatening cities and inhabitants. While architecture and urban planning cannot prevent these occurrences, they still possess strategies to minimize the damage associated with these events and help protect the citizens. Unfortunate events over the course of last year, like the earthquake that hit central Turkey and north-west Syria this February or the more recent earthquake in western Afghanistan, the flooding and dam failures in Libya, and the wildfires that devastated the city of Lahaina, Hawaii, demonstrate the urgency of implementing preventative and mitigation measures in addition to creating procedures for emergency intervention. This article explores the strategies and resources available to architects and urban planners to address these challenges in three types of natural disasters: flooding, wildfires, and earthquakes.
Friday, September 8th, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit Morocco’s High Atlas Mountain range. The epicenter was located just 72 kilometers southwest of Marrakech, the country’s fourth-largest city and a popular tourist destination. The quake is the strongest to hit the nation’s center in more than a century. Estimates put the number of victims at over 2,000 and more injured, but as several towns and villages remain inaccessible high in the mountains, the number is expected to increase. In addition to the human toll, several historical landmarks, including UNESCO World Heritage sites, have been affected, while eyewitnesses in the foothills of the mountains report that several remote towns have been completely destroyed, according to CNN.
Shigeru Ban Architects, in collaboration with Voluntary Architects’ Network, has developed an improved version of the temporary housing developed to help those affected by the recent Turkey-Syria earthquake. The new prototype represents an upgrade of the paper tube system deployed in northwestern Turkey after the 1999 earthquake. This new version takes into consideration matters of efficiency and the need to minimize construction time on site.
A major 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit central Turkey and north-west Syria this Monday, February 6, with a second 7.4 magnitude quake reported a few hours later in the same region, according to reports from the Guardian. Among the most affected areas is Gaziantep, located 150 miles from the border with Syria and 50 miles from the earthquake’s epicenter in Kahramanmaraş. Tremors were felt as far away as Lebanon, Greece, Israel, and the island of Cyprus. Authorities are still assessing the number of victims, as local and international rescue teams have been deployed to search for survivors. Early estimates report that over 1,700 buildings have collapsed or have been critically damaged, as confirmed by Turkey's Vice President Fuat Oktay.
Architecture can be a tool for social change, and the belief in this statement is what motivates the work of many architectural NGOs who strive to address the lack of adequate shelter, generate social and economic change and build resilience in communities. These NGOs operate in two major areas, disaster relief and community development, with many organisations pursuing both types of actions. This article rounds-up several architecture-related foundations that act in emergencies, covering their expertise, past involvement in humanitarian crises, as well as the means to join them in their efforts.
Jarahieh Refugee School. Image Courtesy of CatalyticAction
For the past few months, the architecture community has been trying to bring its contribution to the fight against the pandemic. The global spread of this crisis might have triggered a coordinated, and thus a more visible effort, but this isn’t the first time professionals step up in crises. Over the years, natural disasters and emergencies have determined several architects to get involved in disaster relief initiatives, as well as a wide range of humanitarian actions. In this article, we take a look at different occasions various architects and practices made a significant contribution to, helping affected communities overcome hardship.
As hospitals around the world are reaching their capacity, the architecture and design community is developing new alternatives to fight COVID-19. In order to build 60 Emergency Quarantine Facilities (EQF), WTA was inspired by their pavilion developed last year, part of the Anthology Festival. A viable quarantine structure, the Boysen Pavilion “embodied speed, scalability and simplicity in its structure”.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shown yet again how designers are needed to reimagine emergency shelters. With an estimated 900 million people around the world to remain at home because of the virus, there are also a number of hospitals without the necessary beds to treat infected patients. At the same time, the need for emergency shelters is tied to many types of crisis, not just this virus or a pandemic.
SheltAir, a pavilion developed and designed by Gregory Quinn as part of his doctoral thesis at the Berlin University of the Arts is, as its name suggests, a shelter constructed with the help of air: a meticulously devised system comprising an elastic gridshell and pneumatic falsework in the form of air-filled cushions.
Ten years ago when Colombian Fernando Llanos tried to build his own house in Cundinamarca, he realized that moving the materials from Bogota was going to be very difficult. After mulling it over, he decided to build his house out of plastic, and after a series of trials and errors, he ended up meeting architect Óscar Méndez, who developed his thesis on the same subject, and together they founded the company Conceptos Plásticos (Plastic Concepts) in 2011.
The innovative local company managed to patent its system of bricks and pillars made of recycled plastic, which is then put together like Lego pieces in a construction system that lets you build houses up to two stories high in five days.
