Architecture of resilience : how can architecture instil resilience within communities in the face of future disasters?

Abstract

This project is about discovering ways that architecture can intervene and help preserve communities in the face of disaster. To preserve communities requires building resilience. This project focuses on how to instil resilience into a community and will explore ways non-architectural issues can be synthesized into architectural forms that can have the effect of changing perspective, raising awareness, and encouraging resourcefulness. It will consider methods of strengthening communities from within the parameters of an ecologically resilient perspective only; will argue that the traditional, engineering, understanding of resilience that informs current practice in western cultures is not as effective as an ecological approach to the preservation of communities in the face of natural disasters; and that establishing ecological resilience in communities is essential for their survival in the face of the increasing number of natural disasters expected in the future. The design aspect of the project will involve artificially introducing a disturbance factor, flooding, into an area which will be modified to handle it while also using it to promote community activity.

Architectural installations will also be designed to facilitate use of the area.

Project site: Thames, Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand