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.
spatial planning: The Latest Architecture and News
The Fractals at the Heart of Indigenous African Architecture
Fractals are complex geometric shapes with fractional dimensional properties. They have emerged as swirling patterns within the frontiers of mathematics, information technology, and computer graphics. Over the last 30 years, these patterns have also become important modeling tools in other fields, including biology, geology, and other natural sciences. However, fractals have existed far beyond the birth of computers, and have been observed by anthropologists in indigenous African societies. One of which is Ron Eglash; an American scientist who presents the evidence of fractals in the architecture, art, textile sculpture, and religion of indigenous African societies. In his book, “African Fractals: Modern Computing and indigenous design”, the fractals in African societies are not simply accidental or intuitive but are design themes that evolve from cultural practices and societal structures.
Michelle Mlati's Afrofuturist Approach To Spatial Planning
With an academic background that includes social sciences, curatorship, and architecture, Michelle Mlati's trajectory is an interesting one; more so for the way her current work dabbles in these areas simultaneously.
Describing herself as an afrofuturist critical spatial designer, Johannesburg-based Mlati’s practice investigates elements of the city, from sustainability through to social dynamics, architecture to aural and visual cultures.