Panarchistic Architecture ::

Chapter #1

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.

Introduction

“A world without fires is like a sphere without roundness” Pausas and Keeley, 2009

In the fire-prone wildlands of the western United States, the past several fire seasons have seen factors including soaring temperatures, low humidity, strong winds, and drought and disease-ridden, thus tinder-dry forests, converge to create extreme fire weather. In scenes described as “unprecedented” (Nace, 2018, online), wildfires [2] of intensities of an order of magnitude greater than previously witnessed in living memory have become manifest, and in the process, engulfed communities living both within and at the interface of wildlands. As lives, properties, and livelihoods have been lost to wildfires, debates have raged over possible means of mitigation of the ‘problem’ of ‘living with wildfire’. Currently, nearly 900,000 US homes are designated at high or very high risk of loss to wildfire (McCrea, 2016), with roughly forty-eight times that number at intermediate to medium risk (Radeloff et al, 2018). However, residential development at the wildland urban interface [3] having risen by 60% in under two decades (WhiteHouse, 2016; Theobald and Romme, 2007), and still fast-rising, renders such ‘at risk’ statistics moving targets. But, challenging though the present wildland urban interface circumstances are, if climatological forecasts come to pass, yet greater firestorms are ahead, the possibility thereof written in, amongst other places, theoretical and computer models, and in the geologically indelible ink that is the fossil record. Current perspectives considered incapable of generating effective means of mitigation of the risks that wildfire poses to the peoples and properties that populate the wildland urban interface (Smith et al, 2016), this thesis presents an alternative. A product of a systemic interrogation of the interplay between abiotic, biotic, and human systems throughout space and time, this thesis triangulates data spanning myriad forms, disciplines, and epochs. In pursuit thereof, the modus operandi has been that of establishing the relation of not one field to another, but, sensu Heraclitus [4], to the whole, therein understanding wildfire beyond the level of human experience, and in the context of the evolution of life and of Earth’s systems more generally.

Though not ubiquitous within terrestrial landscapes, wildfire is widespread. A primary contributing factor relating thereto is its integral role in the reproductive processes of plants that have adapted to persist in its presence. An evolutionary legacy of which the origins date to the Late Silurian of nearly 420 million years ago, these plants are not merely pivotal in fuelling wildfires, but in their propagation. As in the biotic world at large, the ways and means by which these plants have evolved to persist with wildfire are bespoke to their environmental circumstances. In the western United States, it being a place where wildfire’s presence is so ancient as to date to the period when the land mass upon which it stands, Northern America, was still wedged between what would become Eurasia, South America, and Africa [Euramerica] [Fig. 1], fire-adapted biota exhibit three principle wildfire persistence strategies. In each instance, the functional traits as selected are suited to the wildfire frequencies, intensities, behaviours, and resultant impacts [severities] as historically become manifest within the locale of the species. Thus, fire-adapted biota are coupled with qualitatively differentiated fire regimes. However, the process of evolution ongoing, theirs is the capacity, within limits, to adapt to changes within those regimes, and the environment at large. Furthermore, theirs is also the capacity to enhance not harm the integrity of the Earth systems [i.e. hydrosphere, geosphere, pedosphere] with which they interface. In order that these highly complex processes could be understood in such detail as to enable the theoretical exploration of their migration to form material and information systems as could collectively create an alternative wildland urban interface paradigm, they have been examined at the level of biochemistry, physics, ecology, and the wider Earth Sciences, and within both their local and global context of present and possible future. However, plant biota is just one of several environmental variables that influence wildfire’s expression in landscapes, others being climate, weather, topography, disease, and human actions. In all instances these variables operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales, thus need be understood as systems within systems of which neither causes nor effects operate linearly [Fig. 2]. Such that their individual and collective role in curating the frequencies, intensities, severities, and behaviours of wildfire, including where, how, and at what strata and speed it travels through landscapes, these domains are each discussed in detail in the coming chapters, as are the primary fields of systems theory as relate thereto.

Inhabited by humans since the Upper Palaeolithic, the challenge of living with wildfire in the western United States is one its indigenous peoples have long contemplated. Theirs, architectures as have not merely enabled their habitation of the region for an estimated 13tya, but for the period thereof, left none but ecologically- benign artefacts behind, Native Americans have, in effect, already ‘solved’ the ‘problem’ of habitation of fire-prone lands. Their solution more sophisticated than a discussion of architectural technicalities alone could convey, this thesis examines how and why their belief-system and tenets thereof, including Origin of Fire mythologies, constitute the metaphysical foundations upon which their structures and the architectural systems they form are built. Like the fire-adapted biota with which they stand, these architectures work in synergy with their respective fire regimes. The antithesis of the architectures of the post-European settlement wildland urban interface of present, these architectural systems and the paradigmatic precepts from which they stem may be construed as the forerunner of that which is proposed within this thesis. Hence, the commonalities therebetween, and the potentialities these commonalities may present are discussed at length.

However, Native American architectural and wider fire cultures emerged not in a vacuum, but from one in the same origins as did they of the peoples of the wider world. We, all humanity, are a species of which the existence is a direct consequence of wildfire and, of the geologically speaking recent, our cultivation thereof. Consequently, when we look to the human record, and indeed that of our entire taxonomic order, we find that, like the biota of fire-prone regions, we too are ‘fire- adapted’, both physiologically and otherwise, and in ways many and diverse. But, over-time, wider-humanity’s relationship with wildfire, and with fire more generally, has become increasingly fragmented, and in the process, the synergy that once universally existed has largely become lost. In looking to fire’s role in our species’ physical, intellectual, and social development, this thesis illuminates how the relations there between vary throughout time and space, and the significance thereof to both our present and future relations, for a cliché it may be, but, in order that we fully understand the potentialities of our future, we need first understand our past. In examining that past, but through the lens of leading-edge insights from fields including fire ecology [5] and anthropology, that both contemporaneous indigenous and ancient Indo-European, Americas and other Origin of Fire mythologies speak to a systemic understanding of the workings of fire within the landscapes to which it is native becomes apparent. Within the worldview of these peoples, wildfire is understood as integral to the workings of the systems that sustain them, they being systems of which they understand both themselves and their cultural artefacts to be a part. While the worldviews of non-indigenous contemporaneous peoples are highly varied, both within and beyond the western United States, understanding of wildfire and its role in sustaining the integrity of landscapes and the hydrological, ecological, geological, and other systems integral thereto is typically poor beyond the Earth sciences community. There several causes and many and multi-layered effects spanning disciplines including psychology, philosophy, politics, and economics, the ways in which they have historically impacted on wildland urban interface development are discussed in the Literature Review and the chapters that follow. As in indigenous cultures, the means of remedy this thesis posits are expressed both theoretically and technically. In the former instance, the imperative for architectural, planning, policymaking and other WUI practitioners to acquire systemic understanding of fire regimes and their ecologies is encoded, literally, within the solution as proposed. In the latter instance, from the molecular-level upwards, the alterative WUI paradigm and its affiliated schema are scripted to accommodate of the workings of fire within the landscapes to which it is native.

Shifts in communication and codification concepts, both theoretical and technical, have played a fundamental role in the evolution of architecture and urbanism. The process thereof ongoing, since the arrival of the ‘Information Age’ severalfold developments of paradigmatic significance to both architecture and the wider built environment have occurred. But, while many have been the discussions of possible applications of both established and emerging information communications technologies to urbanism, namely cities, often dubbed ‘smart’, few have been the in-depth analyses as to how and why these developments may qualitatively change the relationship of architecture and the assemblies it forms with ecological systems and the environment at large. As relates specifically to the wildland urban interface, discussions thereof are conspicuous by their absence. Instead, proposals typically seek to augment the existing architectural paradigm [i.e. to add on, or to take away particular features], therein have not sought to examine the ‘architecture of architecture’, that being the building codes that determine what can and cannot be built. Conversely, this thesis examines the developments of the inaugural “information” age [the invention of writing], and the interplay therewith architecture and urbanism, thereon discusses the qualitative shifts as occurred in the latter as a direct consequence of the former. Serving to illustrate how the legacy thereof [written building codes] has and continues to influence non-indigenous architectures and architectural and urban systems, the discussion frames the extent to which emerging communications and codification concepts could contribute to the development and implementation of a new WUI paradigm.

However, though integral to the inaugural urban revolution, the invention of writing was but a by-product of a yet bigger development. Some several thousand years ago the advent of urbanism was catalysed by, amongst other factors, an environmental transition of planetary proportions, which propelled ancient peoples from the climatically hostile Pleistocene into the relatively hospitable Holocene. Consequently, our once migratory species settled, and in doing so turned from temporality to permanency of place, thereon, towards the materially accumulative cultures as are afforded thereby. Indigenous peoples aside, humanity thus largely removed itself from the ebb and the flow of the environmental systems upon which our continued existence ultimately relies: no longer did we migrate with the species we had hunted and the fruits we had foraged, instead developing agriculture and livestock farming. Thereafter, increasingly, many peoples had not the need to read the changes that take place seasonally, annually, and epochally within the environment in the same detail as had their ancestors. As lifestyles became more sedentary, internal [mental] constructs of the external world tended likewise [6]. Thereupon, physically, intellectually, and emotionally, human culture and its artefacts became increasingly less synchronised with the systems of the non-human world, and within some societies, this led to people perceiving of their species as a thing ‘apart’ from even their closest taxonomic relatives. Indeed, by the mid 1800s so siloed was the majority western worldview on humanity’s relations to Primates, let alone other faunal species, for Darwin’s theory of evolution to cause controversy. But, in the west, though the Pre-Socratic philosophers perceived reality as the systemic sum of ongoing causes and effects of a fundamentally elemental, therein biochemical nature, the advent of the Academy marked the division of first labour, therein knowledge, from which point, in the words of Whitehead, “the safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes of Plato” (1978, p.39). Therein, the variances in the worldviews of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples both ancient and contemporaneous towards wildfire and the environment at large may be attributed to not one, but several factors of the human condition over time, the subject thereof discussed further in the chapters that follow.

As the current geological epoch ends, and with it the climatic and wider environmental stability to which humanity has become accustomed, intellectually siloed approaches provide not depth of insight of the challenges of the present, let alone the possible futures as may unfold. Though influenced by the field of systems theory more generally, the philosophical lens of foremost note to this thesis is resilience theory, and more specifically, the concept of Panarchy as developed by C. S. Holling, Lance Gunderson and peers. Concerned with how floral and faunal communities respond to natural disturbances including wildfire, flooding and hurricanes, the concept posits ecological resilience not a product of engineering, but systems-led approaches, wherein connectivity between the system parts enables the elasticity [i.e. capacity to reconfigure] to endure system shocks. Embedding constructs more generally explored within the sustainability discussion, including recycling of materials, and life-cycle design, the theoretical tenets of Panarchy are expressed both explicitly and implicitly throughout the discussions and the design speculations developed therefrom.

In summary, a transdisciplinary interrogation, this work is of intent to provide a critical, yet creative perspective on the potentialities as may emerge whereupon the workings of human [architectural and urban] systems are aligned with those which are non-human [abiotic and biotic]. Though drawing on leading-edge research from several scientific, technological, humanistic, and artistic domains, philosophically this thesis’ roots are intentionally ‘archaic’, in the sense that rather than seek to merely tweak the WUI paradigm of present, this work penetrates as far back as pre-human history in its effort to develop an alternative approach to a pressing problem. In the chapters that follow, that ‘problem’ will be examined in such detail as enables the theoretical development of material and information systems which, designed to work with the fire regimes in which they reside, are posited as a paradigm of architectural and urban resilience thereto: the Panarchistic Architectural paradigm.

Primary Terminological Interpretations

Wildfire

Use of the term ‘wildfire’ is often loaded with psychological, philosophical, and/or political bias. For example, within the policy domain interpretations thereof are commonly negative in their connotations, as exemplified in the National Science and Technology Council’s glossaries in which wildfire has been defined as “unwanted”, thus “the objective is to put the fire out” (NSTC, 2015). Conversely, wildfire is fundamental to the reproduction of innumerable floral and faunal species. Hence, within the fire ecology community the term ‘wildfire’ often carries positive, or at the very least, neutral connotations. Within the context of this thesis the term ‘wildfire’ is used to describe a fire, which ignited by means natural or otherwise, spreads in terrain that either lies outside of the parameters of urban, agricultural or other largely cultivated lands, or at the boundary therewith [wildland urban interface], and is or was, to varying degrees, beyond human control. The implications thereof are perceived as neither inherently negative nor positive, nor benign or catastrophic. Instead, wildfire is positioned as a planetary phenomenon, which essential to [macro] life on terrestrial Earth, produces effects that may, or may not be advantageous to humanity, the outcome thereof dependent on our choice of actions. In such instance as, within a sentence as relates thereto, wildfire has been abbreviated to ‘fire’ and or elongated to ‘wildland fire’, the meaning is one and the same as the above.

Fire Ecology

The term ‘fire ecology’ is used to define a domain within the ecological sciences that examines floral and faunal species, and composites thereof, which having evolved in the presence of wildfire, have developed functional traits that enable their persistence therewith. An established, but still niche field, its researchers and practitioners are thus concerned with the interplay of the Earth sciences, and in particular, the cause and effect mechanisms as exist between ecological, atmospheric, hydrological, and other Earth systems. Populated by extensive terminology particular thereto, numerous are the fire ecology terms used throughout this thesis.

Wildland Urban Interface

As one might expect of a locale that is neither exclusively one thing, nor the other, but a synthesis of the two, and of combinations of the many and varied constituent parts thereof, definitions of the WUI are somewhat ambiguous (Mell, 2010). However, for the purposes of this thesis, the Federal Registrar (2001) WUI definitions will apply, they being a tri-part system as segregates this peri-urban variant into ‘interface’, ‘intermix’, and ‘occluded’. While the research findings have relevance across all three classes, the case studies and other points of primary research reference fall within the first two.

The interface community “exists where structures are directly about wildland fuels”, wherein a line is clearly demarcated “between residential, business, and public structures” and the wildland fuels. The development density averages 3> structures per acre, or 250> persons per square mile (Ibid, online).
The intermix community “exists where structures are scattered throughout a wildland area”, thus there is “no clear line of demarcation”, hence structures stand amidst the wildland fuels. The development density ranges from structures that stand adjacent to one-another to one per 40 acres, or 28-250 people per square mile (Ibid, online).
The occluded community “exists in a situation, often within a city, where structures abut an island of wildland fuels”, the delineation between structures and wildland fuels clear, and the size thereof <1,000 acres (Ibid. online).

Footnotes

[2] Definitions of ‘wildfire’ varied, clarification of meaning is provided at the end of the chapter.

[3] Definitions of ‘wildland urban interface’ varied, clarification of meaning is provided at the end of the chapter.

[4] Heraclitus, spoke of pyr aeizoon [“the ever-living fire”], which he posited to be the ‘Proton’ [primary substance] upon which the continuation of the cosmos [Universe] is dependent. Using language that alludes to the field today known as biochemistry, Heraclitus described not things, but processes in which fire, air, water, and earth were continually exchanged. There none but fragments to illuminate our understanding of his philosophical construct of pyr aeizoon, but that it is “made neither by god nor man” and “replenishes in measure” (2001, p.15), the specifics of his hypothesis remain as elusive as the eternally igniting and incandescing phenomenon to which he speaks.

[5] Definitions of ‘fire ecology’ varied, clarification of meaning is provided at the end of the chapter.

[6] The matter thereof is expressed in the development of extant belief systems, of which the oldest, including Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism express an inherently systemic understanding of the interplay between humanity and the environment, thus there need for followers to protect non-human beings and their habitats. Whereas, aside from inherently revivalist religions [i.e. neo-paganism], younger religions vice versa.