5.1.12 Summary

“The new knowledge [scientific determinism] was robust in the built environment and its mechanical menagerie, but was dismally inadequate in field and forest” Pyne, 2012.

In triangulating both wild and urban ‘lands’ case studies spanning broad spatio- temporal scales, perspectives that stretch beyond human and into geological time are revealed, and with them patterns and cycles which, repeated time and again, need be accommodated in architectural and planning codes and policies. No matter the sum of ‘sanitized’ visions of ‘nature’ of which the ideological premise is that no longer are we, humanity, merely recipients of Promethean powers, but “gods now” (Brand, 2016, online), thus having opened Pandora’s Pyxis are able to reconfigure Earth systems in such fashion as befits our pleasing, as was not lost on Ridley Scott and his ‘Promethean’ peers [122] (Scott Free Productions, 2012), we have not “total mastery over our environment” and thus our “destiny” (Brand, Ibid). For example, we have not capacity to control continental drift, it being the process that shapes land masses, thus oceanic currents, they being the ultimate ‘curators’ of meteorological trajectories, or more specifically how the climate system distributes the energy contained therein: Put succinctly, where a storm strikes and why. We know not yet whether, whereupon faced with the scale and speed of environmental change as was faced by our Hominin forebears, if we, like early H.sapiens will survive, or instead go the way of the several closely related species that became extinct.

Upon abandoning anthropogenic delineations of space, the city becomes just another biome, that like its wildland counterpart aligns to ‘regimes’ of which the materiality and topography shifts in response to environmental change, be that the actions of biological organisms, such as humans, or abiotic events of the ilk of natural hazards. What we do know is that not one, but multiple factors suggest that land-use change will continue apace, and that both historical precedent and present-day studies evidence that a side-effect thereof will be the displacement of other life forms, some of which carry pathogens as are potentially fatal to humans. We know too that, whether at the scale of a hut (sensu Banham) or a city, whereupon the materiality of our shelters shifts from mineral to carbon-based, their level of flammability will change. Thus, imperative is the need to consider the risks as well as the opportunities within alternative architectural propositions. There is no paradigmatic panacea.

The city that arose from the ashes of the Great Fire is akin not to a forest, but a desert, in that parks and gardens aside, and more recently exterior insulation cladding, its interface with the atmosphere is largely devoid of carbon-based materials. However, be it in architectural and urban design practices of London, or any of the many cities that are rediscovering the structural potentialities of wood, and of biological materials more generally, researchers and practitioners need familiarise themselves with the new urban fire regimes as may become manifest within the near-future. Additionally, other age-old issues associated with timber need be considered, of which one example is woodboring beetles, they being a genus of which the behaviour within the built environment will mirror that of the wildland [i.e. be cyclical and affiliated with particular environmental conditions], therein need be accommodated for in maintenance schedules, and risk assessments as relate thereto in building policies, codes, and proposals. The citation below brings some perspective to the immensity of the work as yet to be undertaken in regard thereof:

“Code officials may be opening the lines of communication. In January 2016, the ICC board of directors voted to create a tall wood ad hoc committee, which will study tall timber construction and may develop code changes to be submitted for the 2021 International Building Code” (Avsec, 2017, online).

While theoretically and conceptually explored in the interim by Price and others, architectures of impermanence are one of several urban trends which, predominant in Medieval London, are now experiencing a resurgence, including a revival of ‘cottage industries’ [i.e. DIY, 3D home printing, customisation] and a reduction in the proximity of home and work spaces in general [i.e. efforts to enhance inner-city living]. Hence, the reversion to biomass materiality is just one of a suite of activities that evidence the cyclicality of human ideas, values, beliefs, and behaviours. We have been living in a ‘material world’, but for how much longer? In the chapters that follow this question will be explored in the foremost elementally stochastic of environment: the wildland urban interface.

>Continue to Chapter 6 here.

Footnotes

[122] In reference to the ‘2023 TED Talk’ delivered by the fictitious character ‘Peter Weyland’, which was released as an online viral to promote Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, in which the former stated “We are the gods now”.

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.