Panarchistic Architecture :: Chapter #9

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.

Conclusions

“We’re so bound by time, by its order. But, now I’m not so sure I believe in beginnings and endings”. Heisserer, E, 2016 [140]

9.1 Overview

In 2016, Stephen Pyne spoke of there being a “missing middle”, that ‘middle’ being the reconciliation of fire’s keystone species (Pyne, 2016, online), humans, and the biochemical reaction that first catalysed our Primate origins, wildfire. The latter doing “biological work that nothing else does” (Ibid), yet the former, increasingly disrupting wildfire frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours, and in the process, putting ourselves, our properties, and other species, fire-adapted and otherwise, at ever greater risk, the need to find that ‘middle’ is imperative. This thesis and the research activities from which its findings are drawn is, at its foremost fundamental level, an effort to be that middle: to reconcile human and non-human systems such that the integrity of neither is compromised by the actions of the other, but on the contrary, enhanced. Pyne proposed humans become “constructive agents” that use fire to “make a more habitable world” (Ibid). The preceding chapters have interrogated that proposal in the literal sense: how we, as constructive ‘construction’ agents, construct our habitats, more specifically, how we construct them at the interface of fire-prone wild and urban lands. A first-in-kind study seeking to tackle a problem of ‘industry’ proportions, and at a time when Earth is fast “shedding its cycle of ice ages for a fire age” (Pyne, Ibid), the task was both complex and, at times, daunting. In the pages that follow I shall outline the principle and consequential contributions this thesis makes to its emerging and as-yet-to-be-formally-named field, which residing at the apex of physical and theoretical systems of scientific, humanistic, and artistic genre, re- examines humanity’s relationship with the planet’s foremost ephemeral phenomena.

9.2 A Pyric Architectural Transition: Primary Contributions in Summary

“We will have to rediscover our relationship to flame, not as an expression of Promethean power, but as a relationship we enjoy uniquely with Earth” Prof. Stephen Pyne, personal communication, 2018.

The paradigm this thesis posits – Panarchistic Architecture - proposes that the wildland urban interface of the western United States be populated by architecture and urban infrastructure which, modelled on fire-adapted flora that is native to the regional fire regimes, coevolves with the ‘rhythms’ of those regimes. Both materially and informatically, and conceptually and technically, the proposed WUI schema synthesises architectural and urban systems with ecological and wider Earth systems, such that the biochemistry, behaviours, and overall functioning of the former are synchronous to they of the latter. Within this speculative biomimetic schema, buildings, like the pyrophytic species upon which they are modelled, comprise functional traits that are selected to persist in the presence of one of the three qualitatively distinct fire regime types that are found in the case study region – low- severity, mixed-severity, and high-severity - and the fire frequencies, intensities, and behaviours that are coupled therewith. Thus, within this schema, pyrophytes are construed as architectural ‘prototypes’, which the product of epochs of evolution, exhibit tried and tested means by which to mitigate the ‘problem’ of ‘living with wildfire’.

An ‘architecture of fire-adapted architecture’, the Panarchistic paradigm draws on the state-of-the-art-knowledge of several of the fire sciences, and in particular fire ecology, to establish the physical and systemic parameters that the proposed WUI schema need meet both in the present and possible near to medium term future. The scope of the latter broad, the schema assumes not best or even median case scenarios, but worst, wherein the mean average global temperature continues to rise, and with it, within the case study region, wildfire frequencies, intensities, and resultant severities, all the while, demand for housing drives residential development further into fire-prone territories: the ‘perfect fire-storm’. However, like the pyrophytic species, and in turn, systems, upon which they are modelled, it is proposed that the integrity of the architectures and urban infrastructures this schema would manifest would be enhanced upon wildfire’s passing, as the event thereof would catalyse their various ‘modes of persistence’. Based broadly on they of Rowe, these modes would be enabled through the potentialities inherent in both current and emerging electronic, biological, and hybridized sensing, actuating, analysis, networking, and storage technologies. The latter, when integrated with material, engineering, and design systems, which, from the molecular-level upwards, are likewise modelled on pyrophytes, presents the possibility of persistence to wildfires through strategies that may be classed as ‘enduring’, ‘evading’, and ‘resisting’. Whereas, both within and beyond the wildland urban interface of present, resilience programmes typically aspire to the creation of architectural and urban end-states, wherein the focus, sensu Clementian notions of the natural world and its workings, is on developing ‘climax communities’, the Panarchistic schema vice versa: the construct is concerned not with developing states of architectural and urban ‘conservation’, but with ‘evolving’ a pyrophytic-mimetic WUI ‘genera’ of which the ‘species’ cyclically reproduce, and in the process modify their ‘genome’ as best befits the changing fire conditions.

While the concept of creating life-like architecture and urban infrastructure is far from new, indeed, works of a nature-inspired genre date back to Leonardo da Vinci and beyond, the application of that concept to creating greater architectural and urban resilience in fire-prone WUI habitats is. Given the range and the extent of the risks that wildfires pose to both lives and properties, and both during and after their occurrence, whereas past architectural and urban biomimetic and biodesign studies have largely worked with generic concepts of the functioning of biological species and systems, the study that informed the development of the paradigm and affiliated schema of Panarchistic Architecture involved an exhaustive review of leading-edge fire ecology literature, of fire science literature more generally, and of convergence of insights extrapolated therefrom in new and original ways. Hence, the various proposals and speculations as developed and documented in this thesis rest not merely on assumptions and metaphor, but on detailed understanding of how and why wildfires and, within the case study region, their various fire regimes, together with the species as populate those regimes, behave as they do.

Another unique facet of Panarchistic Architecture is its tri-part paradigmatic approach to living with wildfire. Whereas, currently, WUI developments of the western United States, and beyond, are regulated by codes that, to all intense and purposes, propose a fundamentally homogeneous approach building in fire-prone territories, wherein the expectation is that buildings may be preserved through the addition or subtraction of ancillary features [i.e. ember guards on vents], this paradigm and its schema vice versa. Heterogeneity is one of the foremost features of the living world, the statement thereof evidenced by the immensity of the diversity of plant, animal, and other life on Earth, and a fundamental tenet of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Indeed, in the absence of heterogeneity – of evolution, H.sapiens would not exist, nor with us, all but the first living organism to emerge, or handful thereof, if life emerged more than once. While this fundamental truth has relevance to architecture and urban design more generally, a primary insight gleaned from the literature review is the extent to which heterogeneity has enabled pyrophytes to persist through epochs in which wildfires were both more frequent and/or more fierce than those of present, the direct relevance thereof being the advent of what Pyne called the onset of a new ‘fire age’ and its implications to the wildland urban interface of coming years and decades. While we know not where, within the bandwidth of wildfire and wider environmental trajectories the future will fall, we do know that then, as now, wildfire will manifest in regimes of which the parameters are shaped by climate, weather, ignition sources, both natural and anthropogenic, biomass/fuel type, state, and distribution, and topography. Furthermore, humanity’s capacity to monitor variances in the above in real and near-to-real time is advancing apace, as is access thereto, and at a time when, amongst other technologies, artificial intelligence is enabling data to be aggregated and analysed in ever-greater quantities and at ever-faster speeds. Consequently, complex though wildfire behaviour is, our capacity to cut through that complexity, literally in the case of satellite [Fig. 85] and LiDAR technologies, and to see wildfire’s workings, facilitates such accuracy in forecasting and planning as was unthinkable until recently. The WUI ‘persistence’ modes as developed and presented in this thesis speculate on the potentialities of harnessing wildfire monitoring and modelling technologies within architecture and urban design in fire-prone territories. The persistence propositions accommodate of both leading-edge and anticipated near-to-medium term future developments as discerned from, amongst other methods, review of copious literature and one-to-one conversations with foremost pioneers in the technology field. While speculative, all fall within the range the sum thereof suggest to be technically possible by 2030.

The Panarchistic Architecture paradigm this thesis posits proposing a radical departure from the principles that underpin the wildland urban interface of the western United States of present, its fundamental tenets have been presented in an array of ways, including discussion, speculative design in the form of the Panarchic Codex building codes, scenarios, and flash fictions. The intent thereof is providing those for whom this thesis is principally intended – they being architects, planners, and policymakers that author WUI proposals, together with stakeholders with a direct interest in the future of the WUI, its residents included, with both technical and experiential insights, namely, how, if the codes were enacted, the WUI of 2030 and beyond may differ from that of 2018. Within and of their yet to be established field, the speculations are themselves an original contribution which it is hoped provide of insight as to how foresight methodologies, as commonly used in consultancies to industry, government, and NGOs on possible future innovations, inventions, markets, industries, and wider developments, may be useful when developing WUI policy and codes as need accommodate for a broad spectrum of socio-ecological scenarios, and at a time of rapid change.

9.3 A Pan-archic Perspective: Secondary Contributions in Summary

“The universe to Dee was characterised by ascalar geometry and divided by a series of almost infinite cyclic distillations” Spiller, 2004.

While the foci of the research programme as documented in this thesis was reconciling human and non-human systems at the wildland urban interface through the re-modelling of the former to be biochemically, behaviourally, and systemically synchronous to the latter, as a transdisciplinary study, the task was interrogated through not one, but several disciplinary lenses. The undertaking revealed insights both surprising and pertinent, and particularly with respect to how and why the current WUI architectural and urban design paradigm came to be, and the possible implications to alternative propositions, such as this one.

Upon reviewing the history of wildfire and WUI policies within the study region, it became clear that neither wildfire science nor anecdotal wildfire experience in regions impacted thereby have been foremost influencing factors in the authoring of policies. On the contrary, since the 1800s, politics, and that which underpins politics, namely psychology, philosophy, and the values, beliefs, and aspirations born therefrom, together with fiscal matters including insurance and government budgets as relate to WUI development, and to a not incidental extent, communications as produced by both public and private sector organisations, have been instrumental in the development of the guidelines and legislature that govern wildfire and WUI development. Collectively, the publications as document these guidelines and legislature number several thousand pages, and specify copious requirements that WUI building types of myriad form need meet. Yet, the study revealed the codes accommodate not for leading-edge developments in material science, information communications technologies, nor for the now fast-shifting fire frequency, intensity, severity, and behaviour parameters of current and possible near future wildfires at the interface of wild and urban lands. Furthermore, the guidelines and legislature are designed to accommodate only for architecture and urban infrastructure that adheres to Western architectural ideals, and the thinking upon which they rest. Therein, the need for reconciliation extends beyond the interface of human and non-human systems, to human-to-human systems: to reconciling non-indigenous and indigenous approaches to living with wildfire. But, the imperative thereof extends beyond matters of equality, human rights, and politics in their broadest sense.

Native American peoples have inhabited fire-prone regions of the western United States, including the territory today known as ‘California’, since prehistory. While conspicuous by its absence from mainstream architectural publishing, the literature review made evident that theirs is an architectural paradigm that is perfectly adapted to persist with wildfires and environmental change more broadly. As with Panarchistic Architecture, Native American architectures are foremost a product of their environment. Consequently, the periodicity with which indigenous structures were historically rebuilt was discerned by, amongst other factors, fire-frequency. Thus, in mixed-to-high-frequency, low-to-mixed intensity fire regime regions, Native American tribes, such as the Pomo, ‘built to burn’, wherein structures typically lasted until the onset of the fire season, to be renewed thereafter. Yet, not merely materially are Native American and indigenous architectural solutions to living with wildfire relevant to the Panarchistic paradigm, and, potentially, to wildland urban interface architectural and urban research projects generally, but philosophically too.

Having extended the literature review to encompass the history of fire and humanity, and in the physical, intellectual, and emotional sense, a critical factor became apparent. Though a species of which the birth and life is intimately bound with wildfire, whereas indigenous peoples, as did our ancestors, hold fire and the myths of origin of humanity’s control of fire in reverence, many non-indigenous peoples vice versa. Therein, in non-indigenous communities, this thesis argues that the nature of the reconciliation as needed between human and non-human systems is not solely technical in nature, but extends to how we relate to wildfire intellectually and emotionally, and to the ‘wild’ in its broadest sense. In examining the origin of fire myths of several extant and extinct peoples, commonalities in the structure, content, meaning, and intent of those myths and their affiliated rituals and paraphernalia became apparent, as did, in Indo-European myths, linguistic relations. Since the advent of research siloes and of disciplinary divisions between the sciences, humanities, and arts, these mythologies have been treated as products born solely of the human imagination. This thesis challenges that notion, the act thereof a consequence of the application of the lens of fire ecology to the origin of fire myths of the Greeks, Vedics, and Native South and North Americans, and more specifically, analysis of the narrative as relates to the interplay between fire and fire persistent genus, including two of those that are central to the architectural and urban proposition that is Panarchistic Architecture, they being Pinus and Quercus [Fig. 86]. The findings present relations therebetween that speak to profound understanding of fire-prone habitats and of the pyrophytes found therein. In the instance of the former, analysis of the myths suggests that this knowledge emerged prior to the Bronze Age, and thus, though adapted to the environmental particulars of the places to which early humans migrated, including the pyrophytic biota bespoke thereto, and to the differences as emerged in their languages, rituals, and cultures more generally, the myths are, to all intense and purposes, legacies of one in the same origin. The connectivity between origin of fire myths of both ancient and contemporaneous indigenous communities of regions including the western United States, renders them living knowledge systems, which like the pyrophytic species to which some speak, either explicitly or metaphorically, evolve over time. The relevance thereof extends beyond matters anthropological, literary, and artistic, and to politics, and to the policies and codes born therefrom. Presently, First Nation peoples have varying degrees of influence over the development polices as relate to their territories, they being territories as largely reside in or at the interface of wildlands. However, that influence is, within policy, restricted to those lands. Many are the contributing factors thereto, of which the most pertinent is arguably that of absence of wider recognition of how indigenous knowledge systems work, and of why those systems, they being complex systems, have particular relevance now, it being a time when essentially imperialist approaches to land-use not merely continue to encroach on indigenous lands, but at tremendous pace in regions as far flung as the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The absence of awareness of indigenous knowledge systems amongst the wider populous is not accidental, but a consequence of a long tried and long tested tactic on the part of those that seek to suppress the influence of the peoples of whom the lands they have acquired through acts of aggression, both invasions and otherwise. Cultural imposition is a strategic act as old as recorded time, of which the premise is the notion that the imposters’ belief and value-systems are more credible than they of those from whom lands are being taken (Frankopan, 2015). But, no matter the millennia that have now past since the first recorded accounts, the problem persists to this day.

The act of reconciliation requires of mutual understanding and respect, and thus this thesis calls for architects, planners, policymakers, and the community at non-indigenous large to step beyond the architectural and urban narratives of the Global North and into conversations with peoples of whom the perspective on living with fire may be very different to their own, and do so in recognition of the fact that these peoples have preserved knowledge born from observations and reflections thereupon as stretch back for innumerable generations: to our common origin. Conversations, be they between human-to-human or human-to-non-human systems, require compatible modes of exchange of information and of accuracy in translation, for in the absence thereof data is at best compromised, at worst mis-interpreted. Second only to fire in its significance in the emergence and development of our genus, communication, be that in audio or visual form, is elemental in our every societal development. The advent of a new communication modus – of proto-writing – was integral to the inaugural urban revolution, and to the extent that in the absence thereof civilisation and its by-product, cities, may have either emerged more slowly and/or chaotically, or perhaps not at all, for writing facilitated the creation of the principle organising modus of urbanisation, it being the scripting of building codes. Since humanity embarked on its latest revolution – the digital revolution – the possible impact of emerging information communication technologies on the cities of the now, near and far future has been interrogated by scientists, filmmakers, authors, futurists, technologists, and more alike. However, few such interrogations have accommodated of alternatives to the dominant narrative, which inherently technocratic and largely crafted by white middle class males and those in the employment, therein influence thereof, has relied heavily on assumptions including, but not limited to the sum of the future populous, the distribution thereof, the availability of resources thereto, and the bandwidth of environmental circumstances within which all reside. In contrast, this thesis has not merely evaluated the integrity of emerging potentialities through not a narrow, but a wide-lens, such for example as whether built environment proposals hold up to possible future resource constraints in combination with climate trajectories and the fire behaviours affiliated therewith, but has presented of ways in which we may challenge our perception of what constitutes information and why. In the process thereof, new ways and means by which architects, planners, and others in the built environment community may analyse complex socio-ecological scenarios and their implications to their projects have been proposed. For example, in triangulating both contemporary and historical data on fires in both wild and urban environments, correlations between the fire frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours were identified, of which possible applications include use in assessment of proposals for timber and other biomass structures, and structures of which the exteriors are populated by plants, both within and beyond historically fire-prone territories. Therein, this thesis, though presenting not of a template per say, provides of examples of how the emerging yet to be established field of transdisciplinary wildfire research may produce of novel and potentially useful developments in the years and decades to come [Fig. 87].

9.4 Particulars of the Paradigm

“Like the legend of the Phoenix All ends with beginnings” Bangalter, Homem-Christo, Rodgers & Williams, 2012.

The findings of this thesis make evident that a wildland urban interface future in which architecture and infrastructure work in ways synchronous to the fire regimes in which they reside would require a paradigmatic shift in design thinking, practice, and building codes. Having systemically interrogated the proposition thereof, the particulars of the proposed paradigm were developed, as summarised below, with references to the thesis sections to which the statements relate provided in brackets.

Pyrophytes as Prototypes

Persisting with wildfires since the primordial past, pyrophytes serve as prototypes [Fig. 88] for living with ‘biophysical perturbations’ of the exothermic oxidation reaction kind [4.1.1; 4.1.3; 4.1.4]. Though inherently heterogeneous phenomena [4.1.5] that exhibit the behaviour of complex non-equilibrium systems comprised both fast and slow variables [4.1.4], wildfires nonetheless exhibit relative predictability in the probability of their ignition, and the possible scope and scale of the impacts as may manifest therefrom [4.1.1; 4.1.2; 4.1.5; 4.2.5]. Historical patterns of wildfire frequency, intensity, and severity are described as regimes, of which there three principle variants in the case study region: low-severity, mixed-severity, and high- severity [4.2.1; 4.2.4]. While, within the study region, these regimes become manifest in various biome-types, Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrubs, and Temperate Coniferous Forests, were the foci [4.2.3]. The pyrophytes that populate these fire-prone biomes exhibit an array of biochemical, physiological, phenological, and behavioural functional traits that enable them to persist with wildfire [4.2.6]. The selection thereof varies depending on the regime-type to which a pyrophyte has adapted, wherein particular traits are associated with particular regime-types [Ibid]. Within this study, the mode of classification thereof as selected ascribes these wildfire persistence strategies to one of three modes, they being ‘Enduring’, which involves regeneration through perennating parts and seedling recruitment, which enables persistence through low-to-mixed severity fires that return with frequency, but with relatively low intensity; ‘Evading’, which though not preventing against a parent plant succumbing to fire, propagates the legacy thereof through rapid repopulation by seedings that harness the newly redistributed nutrients and space created by mixed-to-high severity fires that return with relatively low frequency; and ‘Resisting’, wherein pyrophytes persist through low-to-mixed severity fires with relatively high return rates through use of defences including thick bark and biochemical mechanisms [Ibid]. Persistence traits found in pyrophytes include pyriscence [fire-stimulated seed release], pyrogermination [fire-stimulated germination], abscission [shedding of peripheral parts], retardant rhytidome [thick/plated bark], and resprouting [recolonization through cloning] [4.2.7]. Additionally, pyrophytes populate places where their persistence and wider functional traits are to their physiological advantage, thus show clustering in the micro-climates, elevations and wider topographies where they are typically found [4.2.8]. Forming synecological units with the fire-regimes they populate [4.1.4], pyrophyte lifecycles ascribe to Holling and Gunderson’s concept of survival through the cyclic process of Panarchy, more specifically in its ‘Nature Evolving’ variant, and as modelled in ‘The Adaptive Cycle’ [2.5; 4.2.1].Within this construct a wildfire constitutes the ‘release’ phase in a four-phase process, which redistributing of nutrients, space, and light catalyses ‘re- organisation’ [i.e. pyriscence and pyrogermation], thereon ‘growth’ [i.e. saplings], followed by ‘conservation’ [i.e. adult stands], the latter marking the final phase of the cyclic model [Ibid]. Within this thesis, the workings of pyrophytes at the level of fire regimes has been illustrated in a series of case studies that collate the findings of several studies of this past three decades, those being the Yellowstone Fire Complex of 1998 [4.4.1], the Southern Californian Fire Complex of 2003 [4.4.2], and the Southern Californian Fire Complex of 2007 [4.4.3]. Collectively, these studies make evident the qualitatively distinct nature of the low-to-mixed and mixed-to-high severity fire regime variants, together with the fire frequencies, intensities, and behaviours as historically manifest therein, and the relations of the indigenous pyrophytes thereto.

Knowledge Transfer

Migration of the functional traits of pyrophytic species to architectural and infrastructural speculations as might populate a wildfire-persistent wildland urban interface future involved exploration of how these traits may be expressed both conceptually and technically utilising current, emerging, and anticipated near-future STEM innovations and inventions [6.4.7 – 8.4.3]. An ‘architectural genera’ [6.4.8] comprised three distinct ‘species’, the schema, as both detailed in the discussion, and presented in the Panarchic Codex [8.0 – 8.4.3], provides not of templates, but of material and information systems propositions as could enable pyrophytic behaviours [7.1.4]. The Panarchitectural genera is comprised as follows:

Pyro-Endurers

Evolved to persist in WUI adjoining low and mixed-severity fire regimes [4.2.4], pyro-enduring architectures comprise traits, which like the pyrophytes upon which they are modelled, are selected to endure frequent, but relatively low-intensity, and typically low-to-mixed severity fires. Featuring below-ground data and storage networks [their perennating parts], which are protected by a layer of soil of thickness relative to its minerality, therein fire-insulting properties, pyro-endurers are connected to real to near-to-real-time information systems through which wildfire and other environmental data can be exchanged. Upon the passing of wildfire, the subterranean networks facilitate the regenerative process of architectural renewal. Whereupon a wildfire exceeds the local historical regime severity precedent and the event thereof compromises the subsurface network’s integrity, as do the ‘superspecies’ variant of the species’ pyrophytic equivalent, pyro-endurers persist through ‘seedling recruitment’, which translates to relying on data [i.e. architectural plans, land-ownership, insurance policies, and personal paraphernalia] backed-up via remote servers connected to the network. In combination with the above detailed trait, pyro-endurers perform forms of architectural pyriscence and pyrogermination, which both activated by detection of heat and/or chemical signals, involves the post-fire distribution of data-encoded ‘seeds’, which released via a propulsion process that, like that of serotinous seeds, is enabled through the melting of resins, which pre-fire, held a protective pod’s exterior parts together, thereon propagate the process of architectural renewal. An alternative thereto is pods of which heat-responsive casing cracks upon fire’s passing, thus releasing their contents. By means of limiting the spread of surface fires, pyro-endurers also perform ‘architectural abscission’, wherein, ahead of the fire season, buildings shed any flammable exterior parts [i.e. wooden balconies] [6.4.8; 7.1.4]. Within Holling and Gunderson’s Adaptive Cycle, pyro-endurers transition [i.e. modify their features to accommodate changes to the fire regime in a form of architectural evolution] from the K to Ω phase whereupon the historical fire regime shifts from low-to-mixed to mixed-to-high severity [Ibid; 2.5]. In future WUI wildfire practice, the pyro-enduring architectural schema is posited to exhibit the fire-persisting potential of a pyrophytic ‘enduring’ species such as the California Black oak [7.2.2; 7.3.2] as codified in the Panarchic Codex [8.4.2].

Pyro-Evaders

Evolved to persist in WUI adjoining mixed and high-severity fire regimes [4.2.4], pyro-evading architectures comprise traits selected to evade relatively infrequent, but high intensity, typically mixed-to-high severity fires, to which the ‘parent architectures’ usually succumb. Thus, their persisting strategy is that of data ‘seed banking’, wherein ahead of the advent of wildfire, ‘data seeds’ protected by the mechanisms as described above, some of which may be stored subsurface by means of further fire-protection, are produced to remain dormant until activation. Whereupon a wildfire occurs, the materiality of parent architectures redistribute into their surroundings, thus becoming nutrients that propagate the process of environmental and architectural renewal. Therein, these intentionally temporary structures are built with biochemically appropriate materials that pose no threat to both local and regional soil and hydrology systems, and all such species as reside therein. However, though pyro-evaders populate areas where mixed-to-high severity fires typically incinerate flora and houses alike, the mosaic nature of these landscapes increases the probability of heterogeneity in a wildfire’s spread. Hence, ‘mosaical WUI planning’ is proposed to provide of ‘pockets of refuge’, wherein landscape features, be they natural or man-made, such as synthetic topographies designed to slow wind speed and/or direction, thus mitigate against ember showers, and/or atmospheric interventions, such as reducing the heat and/or raising the humidity at specific sites, are integrated into pyro-evading developments. Unlike fire-fighting activity of this kind, these would be permanent or semi-permanent site interventions. At the locations thereof, further ‘data seed banks’ would be stored by means of providing further data back-up for homeowners, and for both public and private organisations within the locale. The cyclicality with which they renew relatively slow, pyro-evading architectures’ ‘DNA’ [i.e. architectural plans] ‘evolve’ [i.e. adapt to changes within their fire regimes] at a slower rate than their pyro-enduring and pyro- resisting WUI cousins [6.4.8; 7.1.4]. Within Holling and Gunderson’s Adaptive Cycle, pyro-evaders evolutionary transition from the K to Ω phase with each fire cycle [Ibid; 2.5]. In future WUI wildfire practice, the pyro-evading architectural schema is posited to exhibit the fire-persisting potential of a pyrophytic ‘evading’ species such as the Lodgepole pine [7.2.1;7.3.1] as codified in the Panarchic Codex [8.4.1].

Pyro-Resistors

Evolved to persist in WUI adjoining low and mixed-severity fire regimes [4.2.4], pyro-resisting architectures comprise traits selected to resist frequent, fast-spreading and relatively low-intensity fires. Their material chemical composition and form, and overall structure and architectural schema are discerned from both the functional traits of their ecological counterparts in their locale [resistors] and the topography, wind and atmospheric conditions, and biomass composition, and the combined impacts thereof on historical patterns of fire spread and behaviour. Their exteriors protected by the architectural equivalent of retardant rhytidome, which deflects fire through both physical and chemical actions [heat dissipation through plate-like furrowed mineral-based cladding], their principally surface-fire focused defences, are largely located between ground and first-floor level, but upwards of several meters where necessary. In addition to fire-resistant walls, windows, and doors, including both permanent and temporary fixtures [i.e. fire-resistant sliding or closing shutters], pyro-resistors seasonally ‘self-prune’ any flammable exterior parts [i.e. flammable trellises] as may act as fire-ladders in advance of the fire-season. A variant thereof is adapted for regions where canopy fires are not infrequent, and in this instance upper building parts, including roofs will be protected through further ‘pyro-armoury’ in the form of non-flammable materials in concert with structural form which prevents against burning embers and debris settling and alighting the building [i.e. steep roofs and covered eaves]. However, like their pyro-enduring and pyro-evading cousins, pyro-resistors insure against the worst-case scenario by storing data in pyriscent-like seeds of which the ‘germination’ is catalysed by wildfire through heat and chemical sensing mechanisms [6.4.8; 7.1.4]. Within Holling and Gunderson’s Adaptive Cycle, pyro-resistors evolutionary transition from the K to Ω phase whereupon the fire regime shifts from low-to-mixed to mixed-to-high severity fires of which the return interval is too short for regeneration, thus the architectural species would ‘evolve’ to the pyro evading or enduring mode [i.e. replace resisting traits with evading or enduring traits][Ibid; 2.5]. In future WUI wildfire practice, the pyro-resisting architectural schema is posited to exhibit the fire-persisting potential of a pyrophytic ‘resisting’ species such as the Ponderosa pine [7.2.3; 7.3.3] [Fig. 89] as codified in the Panarchic Codex [8.4.3].

Pyro-technical Synthesis

Research and realisation of the proposed wildland urban interface schema and its accompanying architectural modus would require of convergence of capabilities from several established and emerging STEM fields. Existing satellite, aerial and terrestrial wildfire and environmental monitoring systems [7.1.1] could be networked to pyro-enduring, evading, and resisting architectures such that, whether automated or otherwise, their fire defences [i.e. abscission of flammable parts and/or closing of fire-resistant window and door covers] could be activated upon detection of an approaching wildfire. ESA [Fig. 90], NASA, USGS, and Planet Labs are amongst existing organisations which, already monitoring wildfire metrics in real and near-to-real time, could extend their existing public open access platforms to enable integration into wildland urban interface architectures at the building and/or urban scale [Ibid]. Integration of wildfire modelling, of the ilk of NIST’s Wildland-Urban Interface Fir Dynamics Simulation system and LANDFIRE [4.2.2], could help refine wildfire probability metrics used in the process thereof, as could the addition of historical data sets provided by an organisation such as Descartes Labs [7.1.1]. Yet finer-grain wildfire probability forecasts could be developed from the integration of both terrestrial data from LiDAR [4.1.2] and from Remote Automatic Weather Stations [4.1.5]. Whereupon the above were connected to an artificial intelligence enhanced environmental monitoring sensing, actuating, and analysis platform, such as Living PlanIT’s ‘Urban Operating System’, site-specific wildfire forecasts could be created in real and near-to-real time [7.1.2]. However, ICT leaders, Living PlanIT and Microsoft Research included, already researching, developing, and patenting break-through biotechnologies in domains including biosensing, biocomputing, and biostorage, render it possible that the near-future could manifest a hybridized human and biological ICT/IOT system which, connected to plants including pyrophytes, bridges the boundary between ‘living’ and ‘non-living’ wildfire monitoring networks [6.4.5; 7.1.2] [Fig. 91].

Pyro-structural Synthesis

Material and structural realisation of the proposed wildland urban interface schema could draw on developments in fields including biodesign/biofabrication [utilisation of biological materials], synthetic biology [enhancement of biological materials], biomimetics [mimicry of biological materials], and smart materials [materials into which sensing and actuating capabilities akin to they of pyrophytes are integrated] [7.1.2; 7.1.3]. Existing fields of research enquiry that could be integrated into the cyclic-renewal processes of pyro-enduring, evading, and resisting architectures include environmentally-responsive, self-organising, self-repairing and otherwise self-aware and/or state-changing materials and structures [Ibid]. However, in all instances, wildfire would be both integrated into the material process [i.e. persistence- facilitating heat-activated material phase or other state-change] and lifecycle, wherein biochemically, only materials which, upon fire-damage or incineration pose no threat to regional environmental systems would be authorised for use, and selected such that in the event thereof their reintroduction to that environment catalysed biological and/or architectural regrowth and renewal, otherwise known as ‘Cradle to Landscape Cradle’ [6.4.4; 7.1.3]. In regard of the former, Panarchistic architecture extends concepts as have been previously explored at the scale of products to that of cities [6.4.4]. In regard of the latter, it extends concepts previously explored in the context of human systems [i.e. socially] [2.1.3; 5.1.3; 5.1.8; 5.1.9; 6.4.6] to non-human systems, wherein from the moment of conception, architects, planners, and others involved in the design process need consider of the implications of a building’s ‘death’ on both abiotic and biotic systems locally, regionally, and globally [4.5-4.5.5; 6.1.8; 6.3.2; 7.2 – 7.2.3].

Pyro-urban Codes

The primary conceptual and technical tenets of the Panarchistic architectural paradigm are converged in the Panarchic Codex: California Code of Regulations 2030 [8.1 – 8.4.3], which a tri-part speculative publication posits the regulations as could be applied to low-rise residential wildland urban interface developments of the pyro-persisting enduring, evading, and resisting kind. Serving principally as a provocation, the codes have been authored such that they may be used in workshops, lectures, and other experimental and educational activities engaging both student and professional researchers and practitioners from wide-ranging disciplines, including architecture, planning, and policymaking, together with all such fields as would be involved in the further development of the paradigm, such as information communications technologies, materials science, and fire ecology. The codex integrates a series of hypothetical material, ICT, architecture, policy, and governance concepts which have been designed to convey the how the Panarchistic architectural schema may work in practice [8.1]. Presented in such fashion as suggests they have already been researched, developed, and widely distributed, the technique thereof is a foresight strategy which is useful when helping civic and corporate leadership teams to brainstorm how and why future scenarios may impact upon their activities.

Numbering seventeen in all, the concepts are as follows:

Material, Information, Architecture Concepts: ArchiDNA, ArchiDNA-cloning, MaterialDNA, Pyri-CONE, Retardant Bio-Bark, Structural-Abscission System, Subsurface Shelter-in-Place, Surface-level DNAta-Storage System, Synthetic Pyriscence-Dispersed-Seeds, Synthetic Subsurface Bio-Root System, and Synthetic Serotinous Substance [8.1].

Infrastructure Concepts: Office of Wildland Urban Interface Living, Office of Ethics and Environmental Governance, Office of Experimental Design Endeavours, and Regional Landscape Ecology Office, which civic organisations, would be integral to the research, development, and governance of Panarchistic architectures. Together with a further hypothetical organisational group, which comprised both civic and private sector groups, and possibly hybrids thereof, would provide of ‘banks’ for ‘synthetic DNA-seeds’ [i.e. servers, be they configured as they of present, or in a yet- to-be-developed biostorage facility type] [8.1].

Ethical: The Panarchic Oath, which based on the Hippocratic Oath is a conceptual proposition to endow architects, planners, and others that work in and with the wildland urban interface with the responsibility to gain understanding of wildfire and its role in maintaining the integrity and workings of ecological systems, and to share that knowledge with their peers and community at large, while also ensuring their works place no undue burden on emergency services, and others as are engaged in wildfire response. While the technical and material concepts this thesis puts forth would require of extensive research and development to deploy, the oath is a construct as could be utilised with immediacy by means of addressing a critical environmental issue [8.4.3].

9.5 Particulars of a Pan-Perspective

“...curiosity, which may or may not eventuate in something useful, is probably the outstanding characteristic of modern thinking” Flexner, 1939.

Though principally concerned with the potentialities for the wildland urban interface’s future, as suggested by the etymology of the Pan ‘archic’ Codex, the paradigm this thesis posits has built on philosophical constructs so ancient as for their point of origin to be lost in some distant time [2.6 – 2.7; 4.3.1 – 4.3.5]. Within the primary case study region, since their arrival in the Palaeolithic, Native American peoples have been living in symbiosis with fire [6.1.2]. Theirs’ a culture of ‘working with, not against nature’, like those of other First Nations and indigenous peoples more generally [2.4], have a long-tried and long-tested architectural vernacular [6.1.2] comprised many material, informational, and structural constructs that have re-emerged within both relatively recent [i.e. mid 1900 onwards] and contemporaneous experimental architecture [2.1.3; 5.1.3; 5.1.9; 5.1.10; 6.4.6]. Several constructs therein align to those of Panarchistic architecture including:

The synchronisation of architectural renewal processes with the frequencies of historical fire regimes, wherein the passing of wildfire catalyses reconstruction.
Architectures built of local renewable materials which upon fire-damage or incineration pose no threat to the local and regional environment.
Design thinking and practice developed in understanding of wildfire regimes and ecologies and the systemic relation of peoples and their artefacts thereto.
Use of architectural ‘codes’ conceived in reverence of the natural world and its workings, and of intent to protect the integrity thereof [6.1.2].
Adhering to an architectural paradigm as constitutes the antithesis of the Western WUI paradigm, and in particular its prioritisation of human above non-human factors [6.1.3].

Thus, philosophically and anthropologically, Panarchistic architecture proses of a departure from the aspirations of material-permanency of the Western WUI present [2.10; 2.12; 6.1.3; 6.1.4; 6.1.5; 6.1.6; 6.2.1; 6.1.9.2; 6.2.2; 6.2.3] and a return to the material-temporality of the pre-colonial Native American past [6.1.9.3]. However, the arrow of time forever moving forward, the proposal augments the precepts of the archaic architectural vernacular with leading-edge material, information, and structural systems which both integrate local and global capabilities via technologies including, but not limited to satellite, aerial, and terrestrial sensing, actuating, analysis, and storage systems, ICT ware more generally, together with smart materials, and all such biotechnological, biomimetic, and otherwise bio-inspired innovations as may enable the proposition to migrate from paper to reality. Therein, the paradigm proposes yet a further reconciliation, wherein archaic and contemporaneous architectural and urban approaches are deconstructed and both conceptually and technically reconfigured in ways that extend the potential inherent in both. The idea thereof builds on an existing emergent, but notable trend which, whether enacted consciously or otherwise, involves present-day WUI architects and planners drawing on strategies as were used in early Asian vernacular architectures, of which the underlying logic is that of limiting fire-spread within buildings and assemblages thereof through passive interventions, such as roof topologies that prevent against burning ember and debris settlement [6.1.6; 6.1.7].

Within the Native American worldview, fire and the elements more generally, together with all else as populates the natural world, are perceived to be an integrated holistic system of which humanity is but a part [2.7]. Developed not in isolation, but one of many intimately-connected, and in some instances still living legacies which, it is posited, extend deep into our collective past [2.6; 2.7; 4.3.1; 4.3.2], this view is aligned with that of Panarchistic architecture, which rejects the notion that the world and its workings can be understood as a mere kit of disciplinary parts. On the contrary, wildfire, and its geologically-speaking recent cousin, industrial fire, shaped the world as we know it: in its absence not merely our species, but innumerable terrestrial plant and animal species would be absent from the evolutionary Tree of Life [4.1 – 4.6]. Both these and other systemic constructs are elegantly expressed in mythologies of both Native Americans and other extant indigenous peoples [2.7], and ancient peoples as populated both Indo-European and other civilisations far and wide [2.6; 2.8. 2.14; 4.3.2; 6.1.2; 6.4.3]. Bruno Latour has advocated the potentialities of integrating anthropology and other humanities fields into transdisciplinary scientific enquiries (2004) [6.1.2]. Bowman et al evidenced the virtues thereof, having proved there to be ecological truth in an aboriginal myth of a plant’s origin (2015) [2.6]. Having followed methodology suit by applying the lens of fire ecology to the origin of fire myth, this thesis posits there to be universal origins thereof, and those origins born, in the first instance, of ‘observation’ [2.6; 2.7]. Thus, sensu Terence Turner, this work ascribes not to Levis-Strauss’ notions of indigenous and ancient peoples as ‘savage’ [2.7; 2.14; 6.4.3], but vice versa. The relevance thereof lies in the matter that Panarchistic architecture speaks to the potential for a Pynian pyric transition as would realign human thought and action with the element of our origin, and in the process take architecture and urban planning back to their pyric roots [2.8], wherein wildfire and its ecological and other workings are considered at the stage of conception, as opposed to constituting a design-afterthought or mere technicality. Today, as historically, humanity and its various peoples build what they ‘think’, and what they ‘think’ remains not in a state of philosophical stasis. The statement thereof is written, literally in stone, amongst many other still emerging mediums [2.9 – 2.12], they being mediums which change both materially and informatically over time and space and for not one, but several inter-connected reasons.

Looking to the inaugural urban revolution, shifts in the environment, and more specifically the climatological, meteorological, and hydrological regimes therein, in concert with breakthroughs in communications technology, catalysed radical new thinking in architecture, and most notably a transition from architectures of nomadism to they of settlement, therein from material temporality to relative permanency [2.9; 2.10]. The ramifications of that shift still reverberate today, and no less so than where wild and urban lands meet, for these are places where the differences in the workings of the one with they of the other are most acute [5.1.4; 6.1.3; 6.2.1 – 6.2.3]. For the purposes of practicality and of meeting academic guidelines, this thesis is presented in writing, and writing of the Western kind, wherein its contents read from left to right and top to bottom. But, it acknowledges that there are limitations to this mode of communication, which, by comparison to its indigenous, Eastern, and Bronze Age counterparts lacks temporal sophistication, in that the mode operates in just two, not three, let alone four dimensions. As the built environment community both within and beyond the WUI seeks to work in ways socio-ecologically systemic, and to learn from the peoples for whom such holism is inherent, it needs consider, sensu de Landa, how communication frames the way we think about the world about us and our interventions therewith [2.4], and no less so than when integrating our communications modus with non-human systems. When so manifold are the ways in which information communications technologies, both electronic and biological, are evolving, as to be beyond the scope of this thesis to contend with the scale and extent of the possible future impacts thereof. However, that these developments will have profound impacts on society and its constructions is a given if the lessons of history ring true [2.10; 2.11].

The contributions of this thesis may be modest, but have been designed to highlight why built environment researchers and practitioners need consider not merely what they make, but how they perceive of what they make, and how they communicate what they make. Given, ultimately, for all their many pages [2.10], the WUI building codes of present protect not against worst-case wildfire scenarios [6.2.1 – 6.2.3; 6.1.9.1], might we develop new ways of codifying codes? Might these ways extend beyond two dimensions, and into four, and not merely that, but become living systems which respond, in real-time to socio-ecological changes? This thesis suggests ‘yes’, because technically, as illustrated above, we are already migrating to technologies as enable this approach, and conceptually the potentialities are evidenced by the lasting integrity in the face of ecological change of indigenous architectural approaches [6.1.2; 6.2.2].

Four-Dimensional Transdisciplinarity

The Panarchistic paradigm proposing architectures of which the material systems are synchronous to those of wildlands, thus temporal, in the absence of contemporaneous urban equivalents as could evidence how wildfire may spread through the schema thereof, this thesis presents an interrogation of The Great Fire of London through the lens of fire ecology, and of fire and ecology science more generally [5.1.1; 5.1.4; 5.1.5; 5.1.7; 5.1.10]. The undertaking thereof revealed that, like wildlands of the western United States, Stuart London, and before it, Medieval London, experienced the urban equivalent of a fire regime, wherein fire’s occurrence [fire season], was linked to climate, weather, fuel state, composition, and density, and topography [5.1.1], and upon its ignition its spread, intensity, and behaviour mirrored that of a mixed-to-high severity fire regime, such as that of the site of the Eagle Creek Fire of 2017. Likewise, then, as now, though fledgling scientific fields, including dendrology, were catalysing a revolution in how scientists perceived of the world and its workings, fire policy and building codes lagged due to issues including, but not limited to political conflicts which derailed efforts to address known fire risks. Hence, when the firestorm came it came not unexpected to John Evelyn and his fire ecology and science literate kind [Ibid]. Though Stuart Londoners had limited means by which to address the threat of fire, as in indigenous communities, their lores, beliefs, and proverbs, together with a rudimentary understanding of the threat fire posed to their person and properties provided of some means of mitigation thereof, as evidenced by the fact that when the Great Fire came, London’s timber structures had been tinder-dry and ready to burn for not weeks, but many months [5.1.1]. Upon its advent, the fire catalysed several notable built environment innovations, which both technical and administrative, had impact locally, nationally, and ultimately globally, as towns and cities tended move away from biomass to mineral building materials [5.1.2], and fire, thereon all classes of insurance evolved [6.1.9.1].

However, the insights gained from the triangulation of fire data from events both urban and wild, and historic and contemporaneous have applications beyond Panarchistic architecture, and for not one, but several reasons, including demand now outstripping supply of mineral-based building materials [5.1.2; 5.1.3; 5.1.4], the need to mitigate CO2 emissions [5.1.4; 5.1.5], and to prevent against biodiversity loss [5.1.4], which collectively are catalysing discussion and experimentation in the use of both living and dead timber and other biomass materials at scale within cities and other built environments. The findings of this thesis suggest there an urgent need to bring greater transdisciplinarity to the research and thinking practice therein, as includes bringing experts in wildfire science, and the Earth sciences more generally, to the urban design table [5.1.6; 5.1.7; 5.1.8; 5.1.10; 5.1.12] such that worst-case urban future fire scenarios for London and elsewhere remain works of foresight, not fact [5.1.7], and present-day scenarios are better understood [5.1.4; 5.1.6; 6.3.6].

9.6 Beyond Panarchistic Parameters

The inaugural nature of this thesis and of the emerging domain within which it resides, in combination with the inherent danger wildfire presents, rendered it necessary to restrict its underlying research programme to theoretical research and speculative applications born therefrom [3.2]. In relying on theory, both scientific and otherwise, and on reflections thereupon, as opposed to in vitro and/or in natura experimentation, the findings as presented are published principally with intent to provoke new thinking as to the ways in which the challenge of living with wildfire may be addressed.

The foci of the work that of examining the potentialities as may be inherent in developing WUI resilience to wildfire through design thinking, practice and building codes modelled on ecological systems and the state-of-the-knowledge theories as relate thereto, while the latest statistical data on the performance of past and current WUI paradigms in the event of wildfire have been assessed, together with the over-arching WUI material, informatic, and structural schema, the review largely excluded data as relates to non-residential properties [i.e. commercial and civic buildings]. Furthermore, though wide-ranging data as detailed the particulars of the fire vulnerabilities within typical WUI residential buildings of present were examined, the intent not to tinker with the existing paradigm, but to clean the canvas, only select examples as were deemed highly representative of the overall nature of the vulnerabilities, and underlying issues thereof, were selected for discussion. Concerned with the biochemistry, behaviours and systems of buildings, and there not intent to substitute the role of architect or planner, but to provide of research and tools as may prove useful thereto, this work provides not of architectural or urban plans, sketches or other illustrations as prescribe how the findings and speculations as presented would appear in practice.

Wildfire and its regimes varying worldwide, this thesis concerns only the variants as populate the case study region. Therein, its findings and speculations are posited not with intent for universal application in fire-prone regions, be that elsewhere in the Americas, or beyond. Whereupon its philosophical and conceptual tenets were to be considered in other biogeographical contexts, independent studies as evaluated the regional fire ecologies, fire return frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours would need ensue.

9.7 Potentialities of Panarchistic Architecture

“casting even the sky above Disneyland in an eerie postapocalyptic orange glow, and lighting up satellite images with flames visible from space”. Wallace-Wells, 2017.

Having systemically and robustly interrogated the past, current, and possible near-future [>2100] ecological [4.1.1; 4.2.1 - 4.2.9; 4.4.1 – 4.4.3] wider environmental [4.1.2 – 4.1.5; 4.5.2 - 4.5.5; 6.1.8] architectural and urban [5.1.1 – 5.1.11; 6.1.2 - 6.1.7; 6.2.1-6.2.3; 6.3.2; 6.4.7-6.4.9; 7.1.1 – 7.1.5] and policy [2.11; 2.12; 6.1.9.1; 6.3.5] issues facing the wildland urban interface of the western United States, this thesis has delivered a bird’s eye view of the risks and opportunities as may lay ahead. In and of themselves, the statistics - be they relating to the volume of lives, properties, and livelihoods at imminent risk of loss to wildfires of record-breaking proportions, or to the rate at which the factors that increase fire frequencies, intensities, and severities, including average temperature, humidity, precipitation, ignition and WUI development rates, are shifting, or the speed at which both within and beyond the United States biodiversity, be it at the level of individual species or of biomes, is disappearing - are alarming. Scientists are worried. So too are many others. Arguably, they are right to be worried. As relates to wildfires, such is the heterogeneity of their causes, behaviours, and effects as to make evident the not one, but several reconciliations as required necessitate sophisticated, not simplistic approaches, and the statement thereof applies philosophically, ecologically, technologically, and sociologically. There will, to re-iterate McIntosh, be no “quick technofixes” (2008). The imperative thereof is compounded by the matter that whereupon that which, absent of such depth of research and due diligence as ensures its claims have merit comes to market, failure thereof to address such problems as it was intended to solve, at best, undermines investor and wider public confidence, at worst causes loss of life and of property, as evidenced in the series of failures that led to the Grenfell Tower fire, amongst many other tragedies as ought not have occurred.

While this thesis has presented not one, but a series of concepts with the theoretical potential for commercial research and development, such for example as they listed in the Panarchic Codex [8.1], the ‘opportunity’ of principle concern is that of contributing to the collective effort to prevent against worst-case environmental and social scenarios becoming a reality. In confronting those scenarios, original WUI constructs have been developed, they being constructs which, though provisional, modelled on the fire-adapted flora of the regional fire regimes, aligned to historically compatible vernacular architectures, and accommodating of the foremost critical external environmental [i.e. resource shortages, climate change, sea levels rises, etc.] and commercial factors [i.e. advances in ICT, Satcomms, materials, etc] of both present and possible near-future, address a wider range of issues than the predominant WUI paradigm of present. The proposition is complex, ambitious, and posited at a time of great uncertainty environmentally, socially, economically, and politically. But, the level of interest and support the proposition of Panarchistic Architecture and its philosophical and wider conceptual tenets have so far attracted [141], and in particular the creation of built environments which accommodate for the needs of non-human species, suggests its potential is sufficient to warrant ongoing research and development activities, including but not limited to research partnerships as could facilitate the ilk of in vitro and in natura experiments in fire-prone territories, industry surveys and other peer enquiries, and an array of media that extends the discussions as published in this thesis to a global audience via print, audio, and film. Collective endeavour, be that endeavour with civic, corporate, non-government, indigenous, and/or media organisations will be required to fully evaluate the proposition’s ecological, architectural, urban, technical, social, and economic potentialities, that being a process as has already been initiated in territories including Northern America, Southern Europe, and the United Kingdom.

The future is not the sum of linearly-arranged, exponentially growing parts, statistics, and binary decisions, therein the speculations as presented in this thesis constitute not ‘data’, but then, nor do the speculations of institutions as wide-ranging as the UN, governments, and multinational corporations. Perhaps, had rather fewer relied on assumptions and instead accommodated of wide-ranging “knowns” and “unknowns” [Fig. 92], while acknowledging there are “unknown unknowns” (Rumsfeld, 2002) many “beds”, to cite a well-known Australian rock band, might not “be burning” (Hirst, Moginie, and Garrett, 1987) [142]? Of course, Midnight Oil’s hit song was not about a biochemical fire, but a metaphorical one, and in the context of the need to redress the land and other rights of indigenous peoples. Western peoples cannot undo their imperialist past, but they can work with indigenous peoples to build a better environmental and social future, it being a future that benefits from our combined knowledge and knowledge systems, and all such imaginable and, currently, unimaginable creations as may birth therefrom. Architects, planners, policymakers, scientists, and technologists are but a few of those as need be involved in visioning such potentialities. As stressed in the discussion on the work of the late anthropologist Terence Turner, filmmakers, such as James Cameron, and other members of the creative community, including authors, and audio and visual artists, have an invaluable role to play in broadening societal perceptions of the ‘possible’. Hence, of the several follow-on and sister projects the research programme as documented in this thesis has so-far incubated, one is a publishing endeavour [143] which fuses science and art to present science-informed, and culturally diverse snapshots of possible near, medium, and far futures. Another community for which the findings and speculations as presented in this thesis are relevant is the insurance and re-insurance sector, more specifically those examining how emerging ICT and other systems could provide of new business models in fire-prone regions of the world.

9.8 No Panacea

If the theories of Jung, Toffler, Postrel and others hold true, tomorrow, as today, and all past recorded days, humanity will remain indefinitely embroiled in debate over the nature of the world and its workings, including they of wildfire, and all related issues [6.3.4; 6.4.2]. Compounding the conflict, communications, be they streamed to televisions, laptops, tablets, or mobiles, or some new, as yet to be invented device, will circulate a mix of facts and fictions parading as facts, some of explicit intent to undermine science and the logic by which science deciphers truth from untruth, and often, but not always, for vested reasons [2.4; 6.3.4; 6.3.5]. Consequently, the proposition of Panarchistic architecture is put forth in understanding that the problems it seeks to solve are denied by some and mis-understood by others, which, together with the ‘unknown, unknowns’, such for example as whether Earth’s climate and its wildfire regimes and other systems will manifest best-case, median-case, or worse- case scenarios [144], renders it impossible to accurately predict its possible uptake both within and beyond academia and wider research and practice [Fig. 93]. The position thereof reflects the foremost scientific theories as have influenced this thesis, including that of Resilience Theory and Panarchy, both of which posit there to be limits to the extent to which humanity can control its environment, thus future.

9.9 Pânadigm: where missing middles meet

“It would obviously take some getting accustomed, I think, if it should be a matter of taking into one’s eyes that which is up there outside the cave.” Plato, 381BC.

We, humanity, not gods, but mortals of whom the existence is but a by-product of the advent of fire on this, the only flammable planet in the Solar System, and quite possibly Universe, have lived through many fire ages. While we know not when, or where a member of our Hominin kind first lit a now mythological ‘fennel stalk’, we know the act thereof changed not merely the course of our genus, but of the planet. But, only now is the possible extent of the ‘Promethean price’ we may ultimately pay for the ‘theft’ of the ‘control’ of fire becoming apparent. Though many are the peoples and the places as may pay that price, few may more so than they that live at the interface of fire-prone wild and urban lands, they being lands in which the fire frequencies, intensities, and severities are escalating with such speed and at such scale as to have increased by a magnitude of order within the duration it took to research and write this thesis [145]. They will likely do so again before it goes to print. Both in the years immediately preceding this endeavour, and during the term thereof, the veritable ‘laureates’ of the wildfire research community have fired multiple metaphorical equivalents of S.O.S flares, their message clear and concise, that being that transdisciplinary research endeavour as incorporates the many and the complex issues that wildfire presents need be commenced and with urgency.

In regions including, but not limited to the western United States, ‘living with fire’ comes not with an ‘opt out’ clause. Present since primeval times, wildfire is so integral to the landscape as for its molecular signature to be both engrained in its geology and in the reproductive processes of its indigenous plants. The original peoples that inhabited the landscape, Native Americans, have lived in synergy with fire and its regimes since prior to the inaugural ‘Ur-ban’ revolution. Though archaic, their architectures, of which the materiality cycles in sync with the fire season, work in ways indefinitely environmentally sustainable: sourcing local abundant materials which upon their degradation and redistribution upon the passing of wildfire pose not toxic or other threat to local, regional, or global ecologies. The paradigmatic premise of these architectures is a product of Native American values, beliefs, and practices that mirror they of other indigenous peoples about the world. Perceiving of both themselves, and of all peoples as not apart, but integral to abiotic and biotic systems, indigenous peoples teach systemic understanding of these systems to their young through pedagogical practice, including the telling of origin of fire, and other socio- ecological relational myths, and on the part of not merely parents and teachers, but whole communities. Both practically and philosophically, from they, the pioneers of architectures as cyclic biochemical process in which material destruction is the catalyst for conceptual and material creation, much may the built environment community of the Global North have to learn.

Evolution, not an act of material, but information acquisition, the Panarchistic paradigm proposes of an inversion of the value relations between architecture and environment of both the wildland urban interface of the western United States present, and the wider predominant architectural and urban narrative of Western architecture since the late 17th century, and more specifically, since the Great Fire of London. The event thereof catalysed a transition from principally biomass to mineral construction materials not merely locally, but globally. Simultaneously, the event birthed the first fire insurance industry, which in concert with the material transition fuelled an architectural approach which assumed there to be indefinite longevity to the relevance of architectural schema, at both the building and urban scale, wherein upon destruction by fire, flood, earthquake, or otherwise, homes, districts, and entire cities have, in the fashion of a House of Cards, been rebuilt over and again, the problem therein not the renewal itself, but the material-process thereof. One of the foremost energy and material intensive industries worldwide, the construction sector faces an ecological, ethical, and commercial imperative to re-examine its business models and all as is produced therefrom, for it’s not just the long-term sustainability of buildings that hangs in the balance, but of the economic viability of methods of production thereof.

The architectural thinking, practice, and codes as presented in this thesis may, on the surface, seem radical, but they are derived from solutions to the ‘problem’ of living with wildfire that predate not merely our species, but our entire taxonomic order, and by over 350,000,000 years. Thus, they are, as it were, ‘tried and tested’, and in ‘in natura’, and within scenarios every bit as complex, diverse, and stochastic as the phenomena at the ‘apex of Earth systems’ presents: they are, in the true Grecian meaning of the word, ‘Pân’ architectural propositions. Ours now the capacity to quantify and qualify the outcomes of fire-persistence evolutionary ‘experiments’ as first emerged eons before ourselves, and through numerous fields of scientific and technological endeavor, to extrapolate and replicate elements thereof, provides of a veritable cornucopia of hybridized human and non-human systems possibilities: a socio-ecological reconciliation, which, interstitial philosophically and physically, conceptually and technically, bridges the not one, but several gaps as constitute “the missing middle”.

>Continue to References here.

Footnotes

[140] Dialogue from Eric Heisserer’s screenplay of Ted Chiang’s novella, Story of Your Life [Arrival], the above relates to the text, “We experienced events in an order, and perceived their relationship as cause and effect. They [an alien species, ‘Heptapods’] experienced all events at once, and perceived a purpose underlying them all” (Chiang, p. 2016, 159).

[141] See Appendix items 4, 5, 6, and 7.

[142] In reference to both the increase in wildfire activity in the study region, and to acts of environmental terrorism against indigenous peoples of forested lands in Indonesia, Brazil, India and elsewhere.

[143] In reference to the micro-publishing project the Future in Flash.

[144] Worst-case being defined as a climatic shift so extreme as to push the average mean global temperature to a par with that of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (McGuire, 2013).

[145] Bringing perspective to the statement thereof, during the period it took to draw this thesis to its final conclusions, the Ranch Fire burned through 410, 203 acres (CALFIRE 2018e), and in the process displaced the Cedar Fire as the largest wildfire by acreage on Californian [modern] record, and by a margin of over 33%.