2.11 Coding Cornu Copiae: From Cuneiform to Chromosomes

“Physically ambiguous, yet charged with political, social, and formal intent, codes operate as the architecture of architecture, creating its preconditions and shaping its production”, Huge, 2004.

All too seldom the subject of critical enquiry, building codes are neither innocuous nor neutral, yet they codify the boundaries, both conceptual and technical, to which architecture and urban design must adhere (Moore and Wilson, 2013; Huge, 2004). Today, as in Mesopotamian times, building codes are typically prescriptive, enforced top-down, and “stasis in nature”, hence devoid of such dynamism as allows for adaption to shifting environmental and social states (Hakim, 2008, p.37). But, while several authors have spoken to the need for codes to accommodate for states of emergence, thus embed such properties as complexity, self-organisation, and generative processes (Chu, 2004; Eigen, 2004; Hakim, 2008), as relates both to wildfire, and to natural hazards generally, none have yet undertaken a comprehensive ecological and Earth systems enquiry by means of expanding beyond broad conceptual brushstrokes, this being one of the several knowledge gaps this thesis seeks to fill.

However, works both serious and satirical (Sorkin, 1993, 2004) have highlighted the need to re-evaluate building codes by means of acknowledging that “cities are units of human accountability to the planet”, more specifically, a planet in perpetual evolution, thus there need for codes of which there is “no final version”, for works in progress are they (Ibid, 1993, p.11). Ethically, present-day codes, like they of Nammu and Hammurabi, revolve around a philosophical construct that in Utilitarianism would become known as the ‘greatest happiness principle’ (Bentham, 1781). The measure thereof taken in the ‘here and now’, building codes accommodate not for their medium to long-term impact upon local and global abiotic and biotic systems. Unintended consequences result therefrom, including water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and events that though termed ‘natural hazards’ are, as a report by the World Bank (2010) discussed, decidedly unnatural in causation. Disasters by “stealth” (Kieffer, 2013, p.xiv), these events are born of human causes, which within the built environment are primarily policies and codes that govern the design, materiality, production, and maintenance thereof. But, perceptions, of what constitutes ‘unnatural’ disasters, like the circumstances in which they develop, remain not in states of stasis.

As miners poured into 19th Century California, wooden homes, offices and stores increasingly densely populated its burgeoning cities. In the absence of the ilk of water hydrants, the outcome was inevitable: fire upon fire – historic ‘disasters by stealth’ - swept through the state’s towns and cities. The funds from the gold rush aplenty, for a time, phoenix-like, buildings would burn, to then be swiftly replaced by replicas, or all but. History nigh repeating itself, as occurred in London in the aftermath of the Great Fire, in 1852 San Francisco introduced fire prevention measures, including the creation of a fire-district in which “fire-resistant” construction was mandated by a building code (Muir-Wood, 2016, p.77). Thus, brick, and inorganic materials in general, were to become materials of choice for a time. However, unlike London, San Francisco lies atop one of the world’s most active fault lines. Hence, in attempting to solve one problem, policymakers, planners and architects had unwittingly propagated another, which no matter the sizeable efforts made by they with vested commercial interests to perpetuate “earthquake denialism” (Ibid, p. 61), came at a human cost, as the architectural equivalent of houses of cards tumbled time and again. Echoing the rhetoric of some present-day architects, ‘the Committee on Bricks, Stones, and Timber’ posited it possible to fire-proof wood (Ibid, p.78). But, predictably, biochemistry got the better of them.

Today, as in the late 1800s, California’s building codes continue to stipulate fire- resistant materials, systems, and assemblies be used in construction. Where appropriate, inter-state regions, such as municipalities, can stipulate additional requirements. For example, some of the foremost fire-prone areas in San Diego county require ‘shelter in place’, such as a fire-proofed below ground-level bunker, to be integrated into all new-build homes (Mann et al, 2013, p.446). However, for the all the scientific and technological developments of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries, as discussed in the forthcoming case studies, now as before, wildfires reduce many buildings to their foundations, incinerating their contents in the process. Humanity’s relationship with wildfire, and the ‘wild’ in general, as complex as it is contentious, metaphorical smoke and mirrors obscure the means of mitigation. But, that solutions are needed is clear, as highlighted by Maranghides et al, “WUI fire construction codes and standards, test methods and best practices are in their technical infancy”, thus “a significant body of research is necessary to improve ... and to address the WUI fire problem” (2015, p. 2).

In conclusion, modes of codification of information remain not constant in space and time. Throughout human history, peoples of different places and cultures have recorded concepts and constructs using a wide array of techniques. In the words of paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, “the first glimmers of symbolic thought” predate our species, emerging 3.5mya (2016, p.23). Long before letters, colour symbolism, signs, and configurations thereof, such as sequences of ochre dots, were among the earliest means of visual codification. Starting with pictographs, thereon ideographs, and rebus writing, throughout the period in which the UruKAgina, Nammu, and Hammurabi codes were authored the foundations of the predominant codification mode of present were laid, the process thereof developed by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks, who collectively created the Phonetic alphabet. The latter’s linearity and its singular direction of travel, wherein the reader follows a literal ‘line of thought’, as opposed to reading a matrix of inter-related data that spans space, time, and physical and metaphysical worlds, speaks to more than communication. Like myths, our codes mirror the worldviews of their authors, and the societies of which they are a part. They tell us how problems were/are perceived, thus context in which possible solutions are/were developed. Thus, whereupon we are to radically rewrite our codes, in this instance, WUI building codes, we need first understand the worldview that underpins the pre-existing codes, how and why that worldview developed, how and why it limits our potential in addressing the problems we face, and what other worldviews – what other lenses – we may look through when authoring alternative codes.

Read Literature Review in full here.

The thesis is also available in PDF format, downloadable in several parts on Academia and Researchgate.

Note that figures have been removed from the digital version hosted on this site, but are included in the PDFs available at the links above.

Citation: Sterry, M. L., (2018) Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory. PhD Thesis, Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research [AVATAR] group, University of Greenwich, London.