2.8 Hestia, Home, and Hearth: Architecture’s Pyrotechnical Origins

“Her hearth, in the form a fire-filled altar, was the centre of each Greek city, the place of civic ceremony. Hestia’s hearth was felt to be the fiery center of the planet and of the Universe” Ronnberg and Martin, 2010.

Providing of heat, light, and protection, fire played a pivotal role in the emergence, thereon evolution of architecture. As discussed in 2.6, Classical and otherwise, mythologies suggest that in the in earliest instance humanity made not fire, but extracted it, and most likely by inserting a stalk or a stick directly into a wildfire’s flames. Hence, even whereupon, at some considerably later time, our genus developed the ability to make fire, the memory of the ‘theft’ thereof remained inscribed in spoken, thereon written word. Even in their most primitive form, pyrotechnologies transformed early humans’ relationship with the landscape, and not least by making places that would be otherwise inhospitable welcoming refuges from extremes of heat, cold, wind and precipitation, innumerable predatory species, and any hostile members of their Hominin kind. New archaeological finds now arriving thick and fast, debates are ongoing as to the specifics of when and where several seminal developments in g.Homo’s application of fire to architectural problems occurred. However, that some several hundred thousand years ago H.sapiens’ ancestors built fire pits for purposes including warmth, cooking, flint production, and more is established through, amongst other processes, carbon dating of artefacts (Gowlett, 2016). But, matters of practicality were far from the only thing on early human minds.

Dated to 32-10tya, the paintings that cover the walls of several chambers of the Lascaux cave complex in southwestern France reveal that their creators had an acute sense of aesthetics, this being a quality that is evident in works from across the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Upon viewing relics therefrom much evident is the matter that materials and sites were chosen not randomly, instead selected for reasons including their colour, texture, and/or form, and in the instance of cave art, spatial arrangement, and the lighting, audio, and other potentialities afforded thereby. More profoundly still, inspection of several such collections makes evident myriad indications that in the signs, symbols, and compositions of many items reside the origins of Western culture, such for example as attribution of significance to particular species, including the owl, bull, and ram. Additionally, abstract thinking is apparent in many works, and in particular that they juxtapose elements of one species with they of another [i.e. animal human hybrids], this being a narrative which is commonplace in the mythologies of the Copper, Bronze, and Classical ages. Put succinctly, sophisticated were the peoples that lay the foundations, literally, of human civilisation.

Proto-architectures featured many qualities that are today hailed as ‘sustainable’, such for example as passive heating and cooling, and the use of locally sourced, abundant, renewable and recyclable materials. But, as relates to the latter, our ancestors’ architectural creations out-performed they of their late Holocenean descendants, in that, as evidenced by findings at numerous archaeological sites, upon their end-of-use building materials were safely reabsorbed into the landscape, presenting not any pollution risk to the environment.

Stepping from the Stone and Copper to the Bronze age, and from a period when temporality of site was increasingly replaced by permanency [i.e. settlement], though many had been the changes afoot within the architectural domain, that which was foremost central to its development – fire –be it at the scale of the house or city, remained at the heart, as well as hearth of every home. From the temples of Hestia/Vesta and Zoroaster, to the ‘wild-fires’ of India and Central and Northern Europe, the inaugural capture of flame was enshrined into ritual, lore, codes, building, and planning (Pyne, 2012).

From the Bronze and Classical to the Information age, though combustion has become ever-more integral to the infrastructure under-pinning human civilisation, the citizenry, and especially that of the Global North, has largely become increasingly oblivious to fire’s central role in sustaining their way of life, this being a matter as would evidencable whereupon one randomly asked a citizen to specify their carbon footprint, or more specifically as relates to a day-to-day activity, such for example as the energy used by means of storing their data in the cloud, or in sending a text via their mobile phone. Indeed, for some, so elusive may be their concept of energy use, that they realise not that combustion is invariably involved in the enabling thereof, thus fire, in its now many forms, remains omnipresent within their society: human society. However, as will be discussed in detail in the coming chapters, myriad constraints now necessitate humanity urgently redesign its relationship with combustion, this being a statement as extends not merely to utilities, but universally. Furthermore, such is the scale and the speed at which that change is needed as for not a small, but a giant step away from ‘business as still unsustainably usual’ to be required. In looking beyond that which is familiar, and to ways in which both societies past and present – but, remote from our own – relate to fire, and particularly within and of their built environment, we gain invaluable insight into possible alternatives to our ways and means of doing of present. More importantly still, with now very limited time to proof-of-concept new architectural an urban philosophical, practice, and policy constructs, by integrating, what, in some instances, are solutions that were researched, developed, and tested over millennia no less, we, at least in part create the possibility to fast-track some processes. For example, it’s not an ‘if’ we can build temporary, biodegradable structures, but a ‘where’, ‘why’, and ‘when’ might they be appropriate within, in this instance, a wildland urban interface setting. But, to answer those questions we need fully understand that setting – that very complex setting - which is what the contents of the coming chapters set out to enable.

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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.