QUESTIONING CATASTROPHE

Enough time has passed for us to not feel like voyeurs of disaster, or guilty exploiters of human tragedy. Rather, we can look at these images with a more objective eye, seeing them as types rather than only as documents of a shocking human catastrophe. As types, they give us enough emotional distance to learn something that may stay with us and become useful in the future, rather than be overwhelmed, immobilized by emotion. Ultimately, tears only cloud our vision.

What exactly can we learn from these images of the Honshu quake and the tsunami that devastated the coast of Japan on March 11, 2011?

“Many things” seems too easy an answer—yet it is true. Every branch of human knowledge is affected by what these images portray. As our concern here is the field of architecture, the first thing we need to acknowledge is that it is a field embracing and depending upon many other fields, from sociology to engineering, from law to art—the list is long and tangled. At the same time, architecture is not merely a summation of these many parts, but a synthesis of them, transcending any one to create a holistic idea of human existence.

The predominant thing we architects may learn from viewing and.thinking about these images is that we are helpless to prevent significant damage to buildings and towns caused by even relatively moderate natural upheavals. The 9.0 earthquake in the ocean floor some sixty miles off-coast and resulting tsunami that inundated the east coast of Honshu Island were severe by everyday standards, but nowhere near the intensity of the planet-shaping releases of energy that occasionally convulse the Earth’s surface, extinguishing living species or changing global climates. Human beings and their communities are fragile because they are sustainable only within a narrow range of conditions and possibilities. It is the main task of architecture to maintain this range or to create it where it has not existed before. To some extent it is also architecture’s responsibility to expand this range when people require it not only for survival but also to flourish within the demands of change brought on by catastrophic events such as earthquake and tsunami.

Here are some questions to consider, when looking at these photographs, if we working in the field of architecture want to learn anything from the Honshu disaster:

Much has been destroyed; has anything new been created?

If so, is it evident in the photographs; or is it something the photographs might help us to express?

To what extent is destruction necessary for creation?

Are creation and destruction two separate, opposing things, or are they the same thing, expressed in different ways?

Do the photographs convey beauty of any kind? Or, are they just ugly?

If conveying beauty, what does this tell us about the qualities that constitute beauty?

If conveying the ugly, what does this tell us about the qualities that constitute the ugly?

Do the photographs portray “Nature against the Human?”

If so, is Nature an enemy, to be defeated, conquered, and controlled by Humans?

If not, is Nature’s destruction of what Humans have made serve any conceivable Natural or Human purpose?

What are Nature’s purposes, as embodied in earthquakes and tsunami?

Can architects somehow design for earthquakes and tsunami, or only against them?

I invite the readers of this blog to ask questions relevant to architecture and design—in the Comments section below—that these photographs might suggest….

LW

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