5.1.9 Hot Stuff: Credrician Thinking in the 21st Century

“We have simply shifted our point of view and are contemplating a new entity, so that we now, quite properly, regard the totality of actions as the activity of a higher unit.” Tansley, 1935.

Whereupon the various conceptually, spatially, and temporally distributed parts as detailed above are considered in toto, evident is the need for Evelynian meets Cedrician Thinking as both comprehends of the complexity of the challenge to hand, and meets it with transdisciplinary approaches that bring the full spectrum of scientific and creative expertise and skills to bare, and in the process thereof applies, as advocated by theorist John Holland, lateral thinking that acknowledges the need for knowledge transfer from one domain unto another, and the challenges inherent therein. Put another way, “Progressive co-adaption of tags [in this instance language and concepts] causes continual change in tag-based interactions [transdisciplinary research and development] in signal/boundary systems [scientific and creative fields]” (Holland, 2014a, p.289).

Qualitatively, Cedrician architectural philosophical precepts largely correlate with the theoretical and applied architectural and urban design concepts that this study’s findings suggest may have capacity to coexist with an urban fire regime. Sweeping aside the “low ebb” of architectural visions (Spiller, 2003, p.49) which, like W350, evidence such absence of research as to think it possible that “the odd organisational tweak of a strategy or system” (Ibidem) [i.e. replacing materiality but not schema] constitutes ‘a solution’, this thesis may be construed as a continuum of the effort to evolve an anti-reductionist architectural and urban design system imbued with intent to address critical environmental and social problems of the now, near and far future: acknowledging architecture as not merely a matter of materiality, but as the pyxis into which the value systems by which we live are poured.

Seeking not simply to extrapolate functional elements of the natural world as befit linear objectives [i.e. reduce carbon emissions in the absence of consideration of the planetary carbon-cycle], and instead accommodate for “an ecology always rearticulating itself” (Ibidem), citing further from Cedric Price Opera (2003), ways in which Cedrician Thinking is complementary to the integration of architecture and urban design with an urban fire regime include:

• Rejection of artificial boundaries beyond their limitations.

• Urban ‘Unplanning’ for “multiple future configurations” (Ward, p.30)

• Designing not in three, but four dimensions, therein processes not objects.

• Relinquishing control of design outcomes unto external forces.

• Creating ‘menus’ of architectural and urban possibilities (Frazer, p. 47).

• Embedding “intelligence and learning from experience” (Ibidem).

• Architecture and urban design defined beyond aesthetics.

• Biotic concepts integrated into abiotic materialities.

• Designing “non-precious structures” (Rattenbury, p. 72).

• Foreseeing “The Natural Death of the City” (Price, p. 119).

• Architecture and urban design as “nature preserve” (Briginshaw, p. 74)

• Recognition of “the annual cycle of climate” (Price, p.69).

• Integrating ‘lungs’ into architectural and urban schemata.

• Architecture and urban design fit for more [species] than humans [117].

• “Hugely catholic scope” of considerations (Rattenbury, p.73).

• Avoidance of “shy decisions and choices” (Briginshaw, p. 74).

• Thinking not to individual, but collective outcomes.

• Architecture as “an evolutionary” act (Frazer, p. 48).

• Creating “plantings” that that ‘grow and decay’ (Spiller, p.49).

Price understood the illusion of architectural permanence. He conceived of concepts as spanned not a moment in time, but many, and are thus relevant to not one, but several generations. Therein his thought processes were, in and of themselves, evolutionary.

Upon standing atop The Monument and visually surveying present-day London, one might be forgiven for thinking the many mineral structures that span the cityscape will be there indefinitely, for the buildings and other infrastructure appear robust. But looks can be deceptive. Geologically, London is built on sedimentary rock: an assemblage of ancient layers of Silurian and Devonian mud and sand stone, clays that formed from the Cretaceous onwards, and several further interim layers, topped by terraces of flint, quartz, and quartzite sand and gravel, and centuries of detritus from human habitation (Royse et al, 2012). Structurally, the above constitutes a configuration with “natural heterogeneity” of the geological systems of which influencers include “faulting of geotechnical properties” (Ibidem, p.45), and shifts in the hydrological dynamics of the territory, not least because London resides in a basin, and is thus vulnerable to soil liquefaction [118]. While the city has experienced not an earthquake of note in centuries, Medieval texts evidence London no stranger to seismic activity. For example, on April 6th 1580 an earthquake of which the epicentre was in the Dover Straits struck with an estimated magnitude of 5.5 - 6.9Mw (Roger et al, 2011; Jha, 2010) its effects “felt strongly”, with structural damage caused across the East coast of the United Kingdom, France, and the Low Countries (Musson, 2015).

While, in theory, UK building codes would prevent against the structural failure of all as adheres thereto, we only need look to the Global South to find evidence of how and why cement and steel structures tend fail in the aftermath of major geological and/or meteorological events. For example, geological failures such as subsidence can cause cracks in cement structures, which in turn can enable precipitation to permeate the materiality thereof, thus corroding the steel re-enforcements upon which structural integrity rests. The elasticity of the Earth’s mantle renders there not any doubt that, even if incrementally, whereupon sea levels rise as ice sheets melt, shifts will occur in the level of pressure exerted upon geological faults. Put succinctly, “like the tides” (Mitrovica, 2015, online), Earth’s mantle and all as rests upon it resides not in a state of stasis, but of perpetual – though sometimes slow – movement. We can but hypothesise as to how a cocktail of sedimentary rock, mineral-based architectures, and seasonal, or otherwise, precipitation may isostatically [119] shake, rattle, and roll. But, bringing a sense of scale thereto, whereupon a 6.9Mw earthquake hit London today, if referencing the Moment magnitude scale, the energy released thereby would be nearly 1000x that of any in living memory. Might a migration to non-mineral architectural and urban materialities be coming sooner than later?

Architecture and urban design practices that take not a leaf from Price’s philosophical ‘book’, and instead assume the ground upon which we stand is both theoretically and physically ‘solid’ evidence not appreciation for the risks presented by scientific ‘knowns’ let alone ‘unknowns’ [120]. As did Price, the profession needs ask “when will ‘what goes up’ come down, and how?” and recognise that, in some instances, building is not the most appropriate answer to a question. Not so much a case of thinking ‘out of the box’ as ‘beyond walls’, and in more than the architectural sense. While not generally acknowledged as a ‘futurist’ per se, Price was an adept future thinker, of which evidence resides in the fact that, like many of the conceptions of his contemporary Arthur C. Clarke, so very advanced were his ideas as for not years, but decades to pass before they came ‘of their time’. Revealing the depth of thought as underpinned such “plantings” (Spiller, 2003, p.49), Price anticipated many of the challenges that would be presented to the architectural and other professions that, in time, would pursue such polymathical proclivities as did he. Thus, while nurturing his projects with insights born of both his own research endeavours and those of the assorted members of the “Hot Stuff Club”, he developed plans for architectural education programmes as could produce graduates fit for an ‘unplanned’ future.

Given that, “fire is a physical process.... a chemical reaction, not an object” (Pyne, 1997, p.9), of which the occurrence in wildlands and urban approximates thereto is cyclic, resides at the apex of Earth Systems, is the most spatiotemporally dynamic of the elements, and presents one of the foremost complex urban challenges of the coming century, one might posit that the exploration of its relationship with architecture, and the built environment more generally, is a perfect fit for Price’s menu of architectural possibilities.

>Continue to Chapter 5.1.10 here.

Footnotes

[117] In reference to the Price’s project Ducklands.

[118] Soil liquefaction is a process in which sediments behave not like a solid, but a liquid, therein amplifying the effects of geological activity.

[119] In reference to Isostatic Rebound [also known as Glacial or Crustal Rebound].

[120] In reference to Donald Rumsfeld Defense Department brief speech of February 2002.

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.