Designing with Disaster |
Stories from Seven Regenerative Cities

 

The exhibition Designing with Disaster introduces the concept of “Regenerative Urbanism” – an anticipatory approach to urban design that explores the optimistic possibility of symbioses between humans and the natural and constructed worlds, embracing inevitable disasters and creating disaster-resilient environments.

In response to the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Reduction was held in Sendai, Miyagi prefecture, the closest major city to the earthquake’s epicenter in the Tohoku region. This conference drafted the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 which outlined targets and priorities for action to prevent new and reduce existing disaster risks worldwide. Based on the Sendai Framework, UCLA xLAB (University of California, Los Angeles) and Tohoku University’s IRIDeS (International Research Institute of Disaster Science) collaborated with 11 Pacific Rim universities on a new initiative named ArcDR3 (Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience). Design studios linked to research at each university have been exploring ways to respond to disasters and build new disaster-resilient environments around the world. This exhibition presents exciting proposals for Seven Regenerative Cities inspired by that exploration.

JAPAN HOUSE Los Angeles is pleased to share this forward-thinking collection of urban design strategies and partner with an international coalition of contributors for this exhibition. These efforts inspired by the resiliency of the Tohoku people, and led by Japanese scholars, architects, and designers in the realms of disaster prevention and proactive planning, highlight the positive ideas and energy that can evolve from the aftermath of a nature instigated disaster. We hope that this work can become a valuable guide for the larger global community and be utilized to mitigate the unique disaster potentialities that exist wherever our visitors reside.

Welcome Video | Professor Hitoshi Abe

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*To watch the video in full screen, please click on the image above, then click on the YouTube icon on the lower right-hand corner. 
 

Explore the Exhibition

The Designing with Disaster exhibition is comprised of four main components: An Introductory Wall, the Pillars, the Cloud (Projection), and the Regenerative City Wells. The Introductory Wall describes the activities of the ArcDR3 Initiative, highlighting the concept of Regenerative Urbanism, and responds to the question: What can we do to nurture a culture of living with disasters and build a city that is resilient and regenerative? The Pillars encompass an area for visitors to contemplate their relationship with the Earth and use statistical data to better understand and care for areas in crisis. The Cloud expands over the exhibition gallery with projected images and data describing humanity’s need to coexist with environmental risks. What would a regenerative city look like where people can live with disasters as part of their daily lives? Looking into eight illuminated Wells, visitors are provided with an immersive physical, video, and audio experience recounting the story of the Tohoku region’s resilience and introducing the Seven Regenerative Cities. Diverse proposals from eleven participating universities have been organized into the following seven hypothetical regenerative cities.

CLOUD PROJECTION

The video presents digital maps of the world indicating all the major earthquakes, tsunamis and forest fires that have been recorded worldwide over the last century. Interspersed between each map, a large mosaic made up of video footage and still photographs illustrates the devastation caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, floods and droughts around the world.

 

Seven Regenerative Cities

1. Hydroactive City, where various mechanisms absorb, store, and distribute water to support urban life and coastal communities embrace new forms of livelihood and commerce with the nearby water
2. Archipelagic City designed as multiple elevated islands of community groups protected from fire and rising tides
3. Chronosystemic City with a time-based plan and design for habitation, growth, and management, where the components of the city are flexibly replaced, switched, removed, and exchanged to survive and thrive
4. Pyroactive City proposes a balance between city and nature, with safe boundaries and redefined buffers to wildfire activity
5. Biophilic City where natural processes are symbiotically integrated promoting cooperation between different ecosystems and plant life within the city
6. Nomadic City based on mobility and flow, rather than sedentary lifestyles, so that streets, highways, and rivers can provide means of refuge and new sites of habitation
7. Dialogic City emphasizing dialog between all members of the city, ensuring cultural traditions as part of urban evolution, to create a more balanced, harmonious society
    

The Wells

By looking into each of the Wells, visitors will be able to visualize each city through plans, animations, and interviews discussing the concepts. The visitor’s experience will transverse imagery, data, and urban proposals to explore possible scenarios of living with disasters, while examining a global perspective on the future of urban environments.

*To view the flipbook in full screen, please click on the "Fullscreen" icon on the lower right-hand corner from the window above.

About ArcDR3 Project

The exhibition Designing with Disaster is one part of the ArcDR3 project and was created and curated by Professor Hitoshi Abe of UCLA and his team at xLAB in collaboration with IRIDeS at Tohoku University in Japan. It was presented in Tokyo from April 9-24, 2022, in conjunction with a symposium attended by architects and other scholars from around the world. Participating Universities include UC Berkeley (USA), University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), University of Melbourne (Australia), National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), National University of Singapore (Singapore), Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Chile), University of Tokyo (Japan), Tohoku University (Japan), Tsinghua University (China), University of Washington (USA) and UCLA (USA).

Exhibition Brochure

Download the exhibition brochure here.

Exhibition Credits

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