Literature Review

“Current perspectives are not capable of answering interdisciplinary adaptation and mitigation challenges posed by increases in wildfire risk to human populations and the need to reintegrate fire as a vital landscape process. Fire science has been, and continues to be, performed in “silos”, including institutions... There is no established industry equipped to handle the issues of living with wildfires” Smith et al, 2016

2.1 Overview

The research questions pertaining to humanity’s ontological framing of the workings of both coupled and highly complex Earth and human systems, this thesis documents the findings of a rigorous transdisciplinary literary interrogation that embraced both historic and leading-edge data from severalfold scientific and other research disciplines which, collectively, form the environmental and social, therein the physical, philosophical, and policy context for a new architectural paradigm for the wildland urban interface. The conclusions and concepts drawn therefrom not experimentally-testable within the research programme, yet further compounded the necessity for an exhaustive review, of which over 1,000 selected items are referenced both in the sections below, and in the chapters that follow.

There being no pre-existing review as relates to the specific intent of this thesis – reconciling human and non-human systems at fire-prone wildland urban interfaces through the mimicry of fire-adapted ecological systems, there being many highly contentious issues to hand, and pertinent discoveries, inventions, and innovations emerging apace throughout the full term of the programme, the task of researching, thereon designing the literature review was, in and of itself, challenging, as was the process of organising the data, and the findings drawn therefrom, and no less so than when making decisions as to where and why literary references would be made in the thesis. In this chapter I discuss the literature review design, materials-sourcing, use, and referencing protocol, together with a body of literature that frames how and why codes and policies form and change over space and time, and why, when looking to mitigate current and future wildland urban interface challenges, imperative is the need to understand the epistemological and ontological issues, and especially as relates to humanity’s relationship with the environment.

2.2 Introduction

Situated within a yet to be “established” field (Smith et al, 2016, p.130-131) that sits at the inter-section of disciplines which, in and of themselves are, largely, as complex as they are fast-evolving, by necessity this research programme required an extensive transdisciplinary review be untaken. The scope of that review was not merely fundamental in establishing the nature of the knowledge gaps, but additionally, the underlying causations thereof, which as discussed extensively throughout the chapters that follow, has been found to be largely the result of researchers and practitioners working within, but not beyond disciplinary boundaries and/or obscurification resulting from psychological, philosophical, and/or political predispositions, such for example as absence or denial of the validity of fundamental scientific theorems. Hence, epistemologically, this study sits firmly within the field of Systems Theory, and is thus highly relational in its approach towards the literary and other sources to which it refers. Consequently, its critique, conclusions, and subsequent creations invariably reside beyond the conceptual boundaries that historically distinguished one field from another.

While, in the 20th and early 21st century, interrogation of fire-related phenomena was largely divided into distinct disciplines, a series of scientific studies published in the period 2011 to present have expressed there an urgent imperative to not merely work beyond boundaries, but to work in an integrative, therein systemic manner, such that data from myriad fields are combined to create a coherent conceptual unit. Advocates of this approach include Coughlan and Petty who stated that fire “research efforts must be truly interdisciplinary, not simply multidisciplinary, and should strive towards formulating transdisciplinary theory” (2012, p. 478) and Bowman et al who stressed, an “integrated research programme is essential to enable humanity to coexist sustainably with our inherently flammable planet” (2011, p. 2232). Thus, that there were not merely knowledge gaps, but that the particular nature of those gaps necessitated new research, was established prior to the onset of the research programme. However, until now, within the field of architecture and planning, no research programme has attempted to combine data from across the several disciplines as are discussed in this thesis by means of addressing said issue. Hence, this study is foundational in its aims and intent - the matter thereof being fundamental to the structuring of the thesis.

Literature Review Design

“[Edward] Lorenz was a meteorologist, and no one thought to look for chaos on page 130 of volume 20 of the Journal of Atmospheric Sciences.” Gleick, 1998.

Establishing the state of knowledge of not one, but several disciplines necessitated the duration of the literature review extend for the full-term of the research programme. The review, like the wider research activities, was phased, organised around the interrogation of a series of questions, as specified in Appendix item #1, which effectively divided the review into a series of sub-reviews. Though tending to focus on a sub-set of the disciplines being reviewed in toto, each sub-review was disciplinary-integrative, wherein the implications from findings in one disciplinary field were cross-analysed with those of others. For example, phase #1 involved the review of publications from fields including ecology, systems and resilience theory, climatology and environmental change more broadly, and fields at the intersections thereof. Whereas, phase #2 expanded the enquiry from principally wild to urban lands, and theories of hazard resilience as relate thereto, both in respect of architecture and urban design. Thereon, cross-analysis with the findings of phase #1. This process illuminated the variances in the systemic approaches to resilience in wild and urban lands, together with an initial indication of the challenges, and the risks and opportunities that may be inherent in the research programme.

Starting from a broad base of literary enquiry, as the review progressed, the analysis and synthesising of findings guided the forward programme, both through the identification of additional relevant literary sources, and through the acquisition of an increasingly deeper understanding of the disciplines to hand, thus why and how the knowledge gaps had formed, together with possible means of remedy thereto. Hence, the hypotheses were holistically honed over-time, and the data sources that informed and inspired their development spanned the spectrum of disciplines reviewed, thus their being attributable to no one pre-existing field, but meeting the criteria as was specified by Smith et al (2016), Coughlan and Petty (2012), and Bowman et al (2011). The merits of transdisciplinary research practice became evident very early on, as in comparing and contrasting different disciplinary approaches to fulfilling one and the same, or similar stated aims, preconceptions and assumptions as to the respective advantages and disadvantages of each became apparent. Such was the extent to which said process shifted perspectives on the nature of the problems to hand, and possible means of address thereto as to constitute a series of epiphanies, of which the foremost significant was that of realising there a need to not fight, but work with wildfire and its regimes.

Fields of Literary Enquiry

“Modern literature, particularly in the United States, has been so saturated with the reputed dangers of forest fires to animals that he [humankind] has developed a deep-seated fear of all fires in nature”. Komarek, 1969, p. 161.

Spanning multiple subjects, periods, perspectives, and publishing platforms across the sciences, humanities, arts, and design, having established the socio-ecological context of which the research programme is part, the literature review focused on the pursuit of clarification of the following:

• The nature of the complexity of wildfire’s behaviour within the landscape and in turn, the socio-ecological and Earth systems of which it is part, including, but not limited to the biochemistry, physics, and ecology of the primary wildfire regime types within the case study region.

• The complexity of humanity’s relationship with wildfire, and fire and wildlands more generally, throughout space and time, including how and why different societies perceive of these phenomenon as they do, and how that relates to wildfire and WUI policies and codes, and the structures as result therefrom.

• What new and emerging, and in some instances unprecedented, scientific insights and technological innovations are unfolding within fields of primary relevance to humanity’s current and possible future relationship with wildfire, and in particular at the WUI.

• The potential implications of the above to both WUI architecture and planning, and to their governing structures – building codes, such as why and how developments in both real and near-to-real time satellite and ariel, and terrestrial monitoring of wildfire-prone landscapes may create new potentialities in architectural design for the WUI.

  The sub-sets of the above literary enquiries were grouped as follows:

• The biochemistry, physics, and ecology of wildfire.

• Wildfire and its relations within and of the Earth sciences.

• Wildfire and evolution, the foci on flora and the genus Homo.

• Wildfire and climate trajectories anticipated to the year 2100.

• Wildfire at the wildland urban interface past, present, and possible future.

• WUI low-rise residential building policy and codes as relate to wildfire.

• Codes and their codification and communication across space and time.

• Ecological systems theory as relates to natural hazards.

• Anthropology, mythology, philosophy, and psychology, and wildfire.

• Biosensing, actuating, analysis, networking, and storage.

• Spatially adaptive and evolutionary architecture and urban design.

• Architectural biofabrication, production, and design.

The current architectural and urban paradigm of the wildland urban interface of the western United States is a product of practice as draws only on research from the fields of fire science and fire defence as relate solely to human needs, in combination with philosophy as relates thereto, and economics. Whereas, the research programme as informs this thesis and its recommendations incorporates research from the Earth Sciences; Fire Sciences; Ecological Sciences; Computing and Information Technologies; Sustainability in contexts including, but not limited to resource shortages; philosophy as relates to human and non-human systems and the relations therebetween; Fire Defence as incorporates both human and non-human needs [i.e. protection of ecosystem integrity and thus functioning]; Biotechnology, Biodesign, Biofabrication and their sister fields; and Anthropology [Fig. 3].

Materials-Sourcing and Storage

The body of literary and other sources that were utilised in the pursuit of this study include:

• Both recent and historical academic journal papers, articles, and letters.

• Government agency reports, press releases, and policy documentation.

• NGO dossiers, despatches, and other relevant advisories.

• Corporate reports, surveys, and other publications.

• Reference books of wide-ranging description.

• Print, digital, and televised news media and magazines.

• Design and arts journals, exhibitions, and assorted other media and events.

• Participation in numerous academic and trade conferences and seminars.

• Engagement in experimental endeavours in natura and in vitro, inc. field trips.

• Feedback from published articles in academic, trade, and consumer journals.

• Feedback from podcasts, livestreams and radio interviews.

• Peer-to-peer discussions and debates in-person and online.

Once research items had been reviewed and key data extrapolated, they were categorised and stored either digitally and/or physically for use both during and after the thesis write-up.

Materials Use and Referencing Protocol

“I expect my students to know the relevant literature, but I do not want them to lump (dump?) it all into a chapter that remains unconnected to the rest of the study. I want them to draw upon the literature selectively and appropriately as needed in the telling of their story.” Wolcott, 1990.

Whereas, science, including social science, and arts and design PhD theses typically aggregate all literature that has been reviewed into a stand-alone chapter, vice versa is true of philosophy, law and other disciplines that are concerned with complex normative issues. As a transdisciplinary work, a hybridized approach was developed for use in this thesis, wherein, numerous though the literary references are, the majority are strategically woven into the thesis chapters by means of relating insights from one field to another, one time to another, and one place to another, and in the process, illustrating the systemic nature of the hypotheses born therefrom. Put succinctly, the literature citation methodology has been designed to bridge disciplinary gaps [Fig. 4].

However, by means of establishing why and how current approaches to wildfire in wildlands and the wildland urban interface of the western US of present came to be, the contents of several of the sub-reviews are largely collated in this chapter. Additionally, such that these approaches can be contextualised within the wider history of humanity’s relationship with fire, both wild and cultivated, and with that, the evolving nature of humanity’s codification and communication of its values, beliefs, and ideas as relate to both wild and urban lands, the greater part of the sub- reviews of these subjects have, likewise, be collated in this chapter. Collectively, these selected items frame the theoretical landscape in which this thesis lies, and more specifically as relates to matters of human perception and decision-making.

The sub-reviews featured in this chapter span subjects including: The history, theory, and practice of transdisciplinary research, and of the fields of socio-ecological theory of central significance to this thesis – Panarchy and Resilience Theory, including the theoretical construct known at ‘The Adaptive Cycle’; Origin of Fire myths, rituals, and related practices of both ancient and living indigenous cultures of Indo-Europe and the Americas, as expressions of humanity’s relationship with fire, wildfire, and the wilderness at large; The origins and evolution of coding and codification, and of building codes; The present-day fire building codes of the primary case study region, and the historical context thereof; Critique of current US building codes and of their underlying theoretical constructs; Past and present wildland fire policies of the western US and both historic and contemporary critique thereof; and a brief outline of spatiotemporally adaptive architecture and the environment, the discussion of which is greatly expanded upon in the wider body of this thesis.

The sub-reviews featured in the following chapters are organised as follows:

Chapter 4: The history, biochemistry, physics, and ecology of wildfire – a comprehensive interrogation of the phenomena of wildfire through the lens of the Earth Sciences. Unifying copious data from multiple fire science and other relevant scientific fields, this chapter discusses the foremost factors that frame how and why wildfires behave as they do; how and why this information is aggregated, analysed, and communicated, including wildfire indices; how wildfire behaviour coevolves with flora, fauna, and the assemblages they form; how the wildfire record informs understanding of how and why wildfire behaviour may be impacted by climate change; wildfires through the lens of complexity and systems theory; the historical wildfire frequencies, intensities, severities, fire-types, and regimes of the case study region; forest coverage, types, ownership, and land-use change in the conterminous United States; the case study wildfire biome types, pyrophyte types, and their fire- persistence traits; natural wildfire ignition sources; wildfire and its pivotal role in human evolution; and global and regional wildfire trajectories.

Chapter 5: A triangulation of past, present, and possible future wild and urban fires which examines why and how the Great Fire of London occurred, including pre- existing environmental, social, and policy conditions, the events of the fire itself, and its urban legacy; a first-of-its-kind analysis of how the Great Fire shares commonalities with wildfires and their regimes, and the possible implications for ‘urban forests’; a first-of-its kind analysis of the fire folklore and superstitions of Stuart Londoners, and their commonalities with Classical origin of fire and related mythologies and beliefs; a discussion of the flammability of the materiality of both Stuart, contemporary, and possible future London, and of related material issues; a discussion of architectural theory and practice in the context of fire and environmental change more generally; a discussion of bioinspiration, biodesign, biomimetics, and biotechnology in present-day architecture; possible future climate, hydrology, and fire trajectories for London and global cities more generally; and urban fires and pandemic cyclicality in both Stuart and possible future London.

Chapter 6: The past, present, and possible future of wildfire in the wildland urban interface – a comprehensive interrogation of fire behaviours in the WUI including a discussion of indigenous fire-adapted architectural practice and culture of the western US; commonalities between indigenous and prehistoric, Bronze Age, Classical, 20th century, and contemporaneous architectural practice and thinking; systems thinking as a lens to understand past and present interpretations of the natural world and its workings, and the implications to the politics and policies that govern wild and peri- urban lands; wildfire and its social and economic impacts in the wildland urban interface of the contemporaneous western US; ignition, fire spread, and fire behaviours at the wildland urban interface, and current modes and codes of wildfire mitigation; cross-comparison with the historic vernacular wildland urban interface fire mitigation modes of fire-prone regions of Asia; wildfire and hydrology, flooding, and debris flows both in and beyond the WUI; fire insurance past, present, and possible future; WUI trajectories to 2100; and re-integrating cyclicality, adaptability, and socio-ecological synchronicity in to WUI architecture and planning.

Chapter 7: This chapter discusses leading-edge and possible near-future wildfire monitoring systems, and the sensing, actuating, analysis, and storage technologies that enable them, together with the potentialities of hybridized human and biological IOT systems within fire-prone urban and peri-urban environments; living and life-like materials and material systems of the now and possible near-future, and their applications to architecture and urban design; and biologically-based retardants.

Forming the meta-philosophical framework within which the hypotheses posited by this theses emerged, collectively, the several sub-reviews provided a birds-eye view of wildfire within the wildland urban interface, and the world at large.

2.3 Key Influencers

Such was the scope of the literature review, and the wider aims of the research programme, as for the texts of influence to be numerous. However, there are individuals of whom the life’s work has had significant bearing on the thesis and its underlying theoretical approach and aims, as listed below:

• Stephen J. Pyne, Regent’s Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University.

“Even today fire continues to stand for what is uniquely human – traits not cached as fossils, a technology of process and behaviour, not one of material artefacts... Fire is the oddity among ancient technologies, for it is not a material object, but a chemical reaction. You don’t carry fire, you carry the conditions that permit it to happen”. Pyne and Pyne, 2012.

Few, if any, understand humanity’s relationship with fire as well as Stephen Pyne. An environmental historian, former wildland firefighter, and author of 27 books of which 19 are focused on fire, together with innumerable papers, articles, talks, films, and other media, Pyne’s contribution to the field of fire research is as profound as it is prolific. While many are the ways in which his research methodologies, findings, and approach have influenced this work, foremost is his emphasis on historical precedents, both environmental and social, in understanding fire behaviours of past, present, and possible future, and, as will be discussed at length in Chapter 4, his ‘pyric paradigm’, it being a construct as enables understanding of shifts in humanity’s relationship with fire throughout space and time. Additionally, the sheer scope and ambition of Pyne’s research enquiries evidenced it possible to not merely work beyond disciplinary boundaries, but in the process to challenge research conventions and notions, and especially with respect to that which lies at the interface of the sciences and the humanities, including, but not limited to use of prose, and of language more generally, this being another subject upon which he is a multi- published author. While several of Pyne’s books and papers have been cited in the thesis, these were but a selection of they reviewed in all.

• Max Moritz, Founder of Mortiz Lab, University of California, Santa Barbara.

“Without a more integrated framework, fire will never operate as a natural ecosystem process, and the impact on society will continue to grow. A more coordinated approach to risk management and land-use planning in these coupled systems is needed.” Moritz et al, 2014.

A world-leading scientist in the fields of fire ecology, wildfire behaviour, wildfire and climate, and sustainable management of forest resources, Max Moritz is an advocate of ‘living with fire’, it being a foundational construct of this thesis. His 145+ authored and co-authored research papers on wildfire behaviour throughout space and time, and in regions including, but not limited to the Western US, provided of invaluable insights into the complexity of fire behaviour, including both local and global influencers of wildfire frequencies, intensities, and severities; the imperative to understand the differences between the fire regimes, together with the fire persistence traits of their pyrophytic plant members; the nature of the threat WUI development poses to California’s wildlands; and the scale of the impact that climate change may have to the fire regimes of the case study region. The lead-author of several papers cited in this thesis, he was a co-author of several more. As with Pyne, Moritz’s extensive body of fire research benchmarks a breadth and depth of interrogation only possible whereupon traditional disciplinary boundaries are abandoned.

• David Bowman, Research chair in Pyrogeography and Fire Science, University of Tasmania.

“...the transition from local-scale fire use to the global industrialization that has triggered climate change requires that we turn our attention to the effects of altered fire regimes on the Earth system.” Bowman et al, 2011.

The founder of the field of Pyrogeography, David Bowman fuses the insights of his 40+ year career to create understanding of the combined human, physical, and biological dimensions of wildfire across deep time and local to global geographic scales. His research driven by the desire to improve the scientific rationale of fire management, in toto, papers and books of which he is lead or co-author number 560+. A sizeable swathe of his research concerned with how humanity impacts upon regional and global fire regimes, his many fields of expertise include the fire practices of Australian aborigines and Native Americans, the impacts of colonialism on the fire ecology of Australia, and how humanity more generally has impacted upon regional and global fire regimes from prehistory to present. Collectively, Bowman’s many published works highlight the highly symbiotic nature of humanity’s relationship with wildfire, and with that, bring a sense of scale to the phenomena of wildfire itself: and of how decisions humans make near and far play a fundamental role in shaping fire’s behaviour both within and beyond human-timescales. While it is beyond the scope of this research programme to read all but a handful of Bowman’s hundreds of papers, articles, and other published works, several of which he is author/co-author are cited in this thesis, and yet more still informed and inspired the research programme and its approach. In the sections that follow, the fields that lay the epistemological and ontological foundations, and the policy and code context of this thesis are discussed.

2.4 Transdisciplinary Research and Practice

“The greatest enterprise of the mind has always and always will be the attempted linkage of the sciences and humanities. The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections of the real world but artefacts of scholarship”. Wilson, 1998.

The earliest recorded persons that pursed interrogations of a scientific and philosophical nature, including but not limited to the Mesopotamian Magi, did so in the absence of ‘disciplines’ per se. He whom is commonly considered to have first categorised areas of scientific enquiry, Aristotle, was himself a transdisciplinary researcher and practitioner: equal part scientist and philosopher, that being the modus operandi of The Academy, and of the other schools of Classical note, such as that of Hypatia of Alexandria. Likewise, transdisciplinarity was a hallmark of the foremost influential and significant natural philosophers of the 16th to 19th centuries, including amongst others, da Vinci, Alberti, Wren, Hooke, Newton, Goethe, Whewell, and Darwin. Goethe was amongst the first to formally acknowledge the virtues of transdisciplinary research. The original ‘STEM to STEAM’ advocate, Goethe understood how and why the migration of thinking and practice from one discipline, i.e. poetry and prose, to another, i.e. natural philosophy, and vice versa, facilitates new insights (Goethe, 2009), and in turn new paradigms, stating “The most original authors of modern times are so, not because they produce what is new, but only because they are able to say things the like of which seems never to have been said before” (Goethe, 2010, online). The essence thereof, i.e. that we need not displace the basic tenants of established scientific theories (i.e. Newtonian Laws) whereupon conceiving of new paradigms and philosophical precepts (i.e. Einsteinian Laws) was central to Goethe’s ecological interrogations, for example, his pioneering research into the process of metamorphosis in plants, and, likewise, to the schools of thought within which this thesis is conceived. This past century - be it consciously or otherwise - a steady stream of authors shared Goethe’s sentiments, including but not limited to Alfred North Whitehead, C. P. Snow, Thomas Khun, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Gregory Bateson, Edgar Morin, John Frazer, E. O. Wilson, Manuel de Landa, Michael Weinstock, and Sanford Kwinter.

Whitehead stated, “On the whole, the history of philosophy supports [Henri] Bergson’s charge that the human intellect ‘spatializes the universe’: that is to say, that it tends to ignore the fluency, and to analyse the world in terms of static categories”. (1978, p.209). Whereupon applied to post-Aristotelian western philosophy, one might argue that Bergson, and in turn Whitehead were correct in their assertion. However, broaden the spatiotemporal dimensions of ‘the universe’ and the statement’s tenability becomes debatable, or at the very least, culturally specific. For example, interrogate the precepts of Eastern philosophy and one finds that the boundaries between disciplines dissolves (Capra, 2010), and yet, within and of the foremost revered philosophical works, “even the broadest knowledge” is perceived as insufficient to “comprehend” the complex reality of the world (Tzu, 2010, p.130).

While transdisciplinarity guarantees not systemic thinking, it underpins the research and practice thereof, as evidenced in the works of the aforementioned polymaths. In Whitehead, Snow, Khun, von Bertalanffy, Bateson, Wilson, and de Landa we find advocates of the scientific and philosophical advantages of working not merely with, but within different disciplines. As inferred by Goethe, we need not move the world, but our vantage point thereto, for in straddling disciplines as fall across the sciences, arts, and humanities, that which was hidden can be revealed. Put another way, “Within the new paradigm, old terms, concepts, and experiments fall into new relationships one with the other (Khun, 2012, p.148). C. P. Snow suggested that researchers work across ‘two cultures’ [the sciences and humanities] (Snow, 1956, 1959), as did E. O. Wilson, writing of an “intellectual synthesis” enabled by the “unification of knowledge” (Wilson, 1998, p.5 and p.9), his inspiration drawn from, amongst other works, William Whewell’s ‘The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences’ (Whewell, 1840). Likewise, Buckminster Fuller inverted bifurcated research practice, by embracing not science and philosophy, but design [and] science (Fuller, 2013), and in doing so created a composite thereof. Whereas, the latter’s contemporary, Gregory Bateson, of whom the research and practice activities spanned several fields including anthropology, linguistics, semiotics, and cybernetics, expanded the systemic mental matrix yet further, to form an ‘ecology of mind’ (Bateson, 2000). Fellow founder of the “new realm of [systems] science”, Ludwig von Bertalanffy was equally alert to the imperative to integrate psychology to transdisciplinary practice (von Bertalanffy, 2015, p.xi). Whereas, Manuel de Landa emphasised how seemingly unrelated events string together to form the fabric of culture, including but not limited to the domain of linguistics (de Landa, 2000). Likewise, Edgar Morin and Kevin Kelly infuse such depth and breadth of disciplinary knowledge within their literature as to provide compelling insights that are as comprehensive as they are coherent in their understanding of the cause and effect mechanisms at play within socio-ecological systems (Morin, 1977; Kelly, 1994). Stepping forward to the present, members of MIT’s Media Lab have expounded the potentialities of a variant of transdisciplinarity, which dubbed ‘antidisciplinary’ accommodates for research activities beyond the limitations of current disciplinary frameworks, methods, and language. But, no matter the term we apply to the pursuit of research that spans several disciplines, in the act thereof we find opportunity to find “how unconscious values affect the very basis of empirical and scientific knowledge” (Bachelard, 1977, p.10).

Within popular contemporary culture, the term “intelligence” is commonly used in the absence of recognition that perceptions thereof vary from one community to another, one time to another, and one species to another. Most recently, the matter has become much evident in press and media articles that speak to “artificial intelligence” as if there is but one interpretation of the term. We also see the issue manifest whereupon authors attempt to quantify animal intelligence through the lens of human intelligence (Berger, 1982; De Waal, 2016). While, various are the theories of the workings of the human mind, a sizeable swathe of the foremost influential transdisciplinary researchers concluded that psychology plays a fundamental role in how an individual perceives of the world and of the events that take place therein (Aristotle, 1991; Plato, 2009; Kant, 2007; Hegel, 1807; Jung, 2017; Bachelard, 1997; Heisenberg, 2000; Toffler, 1970; Guattari, 2000; Postrel, 1998). Thus, while transdisciplinary research and practice, to quote Sir Francis Bacon, prevents not against such “vanities in studies” as may be labelled distempers (Simpson, n.d), in acknowledging there to be not one, but several perspectives, one creates an environment in which falsehoods are more, not less likely to be revealed, hence helps not hinders any effort to bring validity to research endeavours.

Many are the ways in which one might perceive of architecture and urban design, of which one is the physical manifestation of thought: the many buildings and structures of the world as record of the ontological outlook of their creators, and in turn, of the cultures of which they were/are a part. Reductionism has its uses, of which manifold are the examples referenced throughout this thesis. For example, reductionism underpinned scientific advances that made it possible to extrapolate data of which the aggregation enabled Lavoisier to discover the role of oxygen in combustion, thus to pave the way for the swathe of scientific disciplines as are under discussion. Equally, reductionism has its limits, of which expressions in contemporary architecture and urban design are so manifold as to be innumerable. However, in the context of this thesis a couple of pertinent examples are, firstly, the linearity with which architectural and urban design history is commonly presented, wherein, as in other fields, such as technology, progress is framed as following a temporally linear trajectory (i.e. the notion that with every passing decade researchers and practitioners produce ever more ‘advanced’ works). But, peruse annuals of architectural and urban design history and one finds not an exponential expansion of ideas, but a seemingly perpetual migration between ontological opposites.

Look to the many ancient vernacular architectures of the East, and one finds umpteen concepts that, in some instances, for a period of decades, centuries, or even millennia, fell out of fashion, to then rise from their ontological ashes. For example, in the pagoda we find a structure that embodies the very essence of adaptability and of environmental awareness, in that, whereupon an earthquake strikes, its design enables the dissipation of energy, thus the retention of structural integrity. While some posit the concept of ‘living with water’, or more specifically, be it seasonally or permanently, living atop it, Proto-Austronesian linguistic reconstructions, together with archaeological finds, point to the origin of stilted architecture dating to the Neolithic (Blust, 1976; Waterson, 2009). Whereupon a Proto-Austronesian had followed a compass bearing from East to West and some 15° or so upwards, they would have witnessed contemporaries as were equally adept at designing buildings and urban infrastructure that accommodated for water-laden topographies: the Mesopotamians. The city was birthed not in a state of environment stasis, but in and of “a tension between forces”, the evidence thereof inscribed not merely into clay tablets, but into the architecture the peoples of the age left behind (Leick, 2002, p.20). Had our Proto-Austronesian retraced his or her steps, at some, as yet unknown point between the Neolithic and now, they would have found their descendants adapting stilted architectures by means of making them transportable: the original ‘pop-up’ buildings, of which the bamboo structures though strong, are so light as can be picked up and moved as/where their owners require, be that to follow employment opportunities or the avoidance of natural hazards. Ask our Proto-Austronesian to tack [7] through time to the present day, and he or she would find yet further examples of spatiotemporally entangled architectural concepts that are simultaneously ancient and ‘current’. For example, Indian vernacular architectures that feature passive cooling, resource harvesting, flood mitigation measures, such as raised doorways, and structural adaptability [i.e. floors added or extended, and removed as/when their owners required]. These, and other features make evident that, be it mitigating the heat island effect or flooding, water shortages or variances in the use and/or number of inhabitants, H.sapiens are no strangers to transdisciplinary approaches in architectural and urban design.

Shift the compass yet again, such that one arrives in the midst of Renaissance Italy, and one finds polymaths da Vinci and Alberti delivering an old Masters class in transdisciplinarity, the former applying insights from his observations of the hydrology of river systems to tackling, amongst other issues, Milan’s sewage infrastructure problems [8]. The latter, inspired by a conversation with the former, pioneering encryption technology [9], as would not merely enable Alberti and his peers to protect their own ideas, but made a considerable contribution to the development of cryptanalysis. However, while many were the transdicplineers as followed, architecture and urban design practice nonetheless became widely sliced, diced, and distributed into distinct disciplinary specialisms.

Evidencing that architectural and urban design ideas, and their application, align not to a scala naturae [great chain of being], in which developments unfold as if atop an automated factory production line, by the mid 20th century systems thinking was, one again, disrupting disciplinary boundaries. Today, many are the architectural and urban design researchers and practitioners of whom the works simultaneously straddle the sciences, arts, and humanities. However, one particular individual of whom the words succinctly sum up the value of transdisciplinarity within architectural and urban design practice is Sanford Kwinter, who, in his essay ‘The Computational Fallacy’ (Kwinter, 2011, pp. 212 – 213) stated,

“mechanical matter intelligence took on an almost religious status (as electronics is certainly achieving today) to the point of annihilating archaic matter intelligence from public and social memory... No computer on earth can match the processing power of even the most simple natural system, be it of water molecules on a warm rock, a rudimentary enzyme system, or the movement of leaves in the wind”.

Reverting to the archaic: interrogate the predominate schools of thought, therein of action, during the pre-Aristotelian era, and one finds not a state of philosophical stasis, nor, more generally of exponential growth and development of ideas, and in turn of movements, but of migration between points of [philosophical] polarity, which, relating again to Kwinter’s essay, stems from the fact that “the way in which a society organises its systems of intuition – its sciences, its philosophy, and its technics – is in every manner a political one” (Ibidem, p. 212). Imprudent would it be to ignore this matter, given that the United States is currently under the governance of an administration that denies the validity of the outputs of its foremost scientific institutions, NASA and NOAA included, and, in consequence thereof has systemically removed scientific terminology, papers, and other data from government websites (Worth, 2017). Nonetheless, the transdisciplinary thinkers of the present find themselves amidst socio-political developments not dissimilar to their pre-Aristotelian antecedents. For instance, under the patronage of the Ptolemaic dynasty, the foundations of the “Temple of the Muses” [the inaugural ‘musaeum’] were laid. The foremost centre of scholarship and science of the ancient world, upon completion the complex housed facilities including laboratories, observatories, botanical gardens, zoological specimens, and a library furbished with the foremost significant published works from across the expansive territory that had been conquered under the rule of Alexander the Great (Haughton, 2011). However, the legacy thereof is but ashes, with some, but not all scholarly fingers pointing to Julius Caesar as the culprit. Whether the Library of Alexandria fell victim to ‘book burning’, or otherwise, that knowledge, including the sole copies of innumerable classical works, as collectively, Homer and his contemporaries would have conceived a consequence of the ‘theft of fire’ [i.e. the gleaning of what they would construe to be ‘Athenian’ insight and expertise] was raised to the ground, is testament to the stochasticity of ideas and of information, and of the values and of the beliefs that stem therefrom. Thus, philosophy itself is subject to process, beholden to external forces, which push and pull between political, social, economic, and environmental extremes.

2.5 Panarchy, The Adaptive Cycle, and Resilience

“command and control... usually results in unforeseen consequences for both natural ecosystems and human welfare in the form of collapsing resources, social and economic strife, and losses of biological diversity.” Holling & Meffe, 1996.

Referring to “a universal realm”, in 1848 poet Philip James Bailey wrote of “the starry panarchy of space” (Oxford Dictionary, online, 2017). Though several are the subsequent applications of the term, as relates to this thesis that of Gunderson and Holling applies (2002). A morpheme of which the prefix, ‘Pan’, refers to the Grecian god of nature and the wild, and the suffix, ‘archy’, to ‘rules’, it describes “how variables at different scales interact to control the dynamics and trajectories of chance in ecological and social-ecological systems” (Gunderson, Allen and Holling, 2010, p. 431).

Panarchy draws on ecologist C.S. Holling’s extensive body of research, including his influential paper, ‘Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems’ (1973), in which he qualitatively explored the persistence of ecological relationships that had been subject to external disturbance, concluding there “several domains of attraction” (Ibid, p.4), thus multiple possible system trajectories. Having noted wildfires have “particularly illuminating” impact upon terrestrial ecosystems, and that “the natural world is not very homogenous” instead consisting of “a mosaic of spatial elements with distinct biological, physical, and chemical characteristics” (Ibid, p.16), he described resilience as a property that determines the capacity of an ecological system to “absorb changes of state variables” (Ibid, p.17). Across several years and publications, Holling propagated the conceptual precepts of Panarchy, expanding upon ecological phenomena including multiple equilibria states and their relations, in the process thereof critiquing Clements successional theory, and developing of The Adaptive Cycle (Holling, 1986) [Fig. 6]. Concluding, “ecosystems are moving targets, with multiple futures that are uncertain and unpredictable” (Holling, 1996, p.32), and there to be distinct qualitative differentials between states of engineering and ecological resilience (Ibid), Holling advocated for integrated approaches to scientific exploration of socio-ecological systems, by means of facilitating the design of “inter-relations between people and resources that are sustainable in the face of surprises and the unexpected” (Ibid, p.44).

Panarchy’s fundamental tenets and that of its wider school of philosophical and scientific thought have been advanced by multiple authors (Walker et al, 2004, 2006, 2012; Folke et al, 2010; Kinzig el al, 2006; Gunderson & Holling, 2002; Gunderson et al, 2010). The process thereof still underway, Holling’s precepts have been expanded such that today it presents a compelling means to rationalise the exchange between “change and persistence”, and “predictable and unpredictable”, accommodating of “periodic, but transient phases of destruction” followed by periods of reorganisation. (Resilience Alliance, online, 2013). As noted by Elmqvist et al (2003), diversity of response has been found to be especially significant in ecosystemic renewal and reorganisation following disruption, wherein functional groups, each of which fulfil qualitatively distinct recovery roles, enhance ecological resilience.

Panarchy’s interdisciplinary approach creates a lens through which conceptual flaws in interpretations of the natural world can be identified. For example, echoing the words of ecologist Daniel Botkin in his seminal work Discordant Harmonies (1990), Holling and peers (Gunderson et al, 2002) highlighted how, in the absence of insights into other fields, conservationists develop partial perspectives that are too simplistic, of which a consequence is they accommodate not for multiple event horizons, thus “generate actions that are unsustainable” (Ibid, p.8). They identified four ‘myths’ of ‘nature’, as follows:

• Nature Flat – the lens thereof perceiving of “few or no forces affecting [ecological] stability”, thus there not “feedbacks or consequences” (Ibid, p.11) as result from human actions. Within this worldview humanity has capacity to control nature whereupon the ‘right’ decisions are made. Hence, this narrative aligns to a technocratic approach in which ‘technology saves the world’.

• Nature Balanced – within this worldview, whereupon ecological systems are disturbed they return to a state of equilibrium. “Infinitely forgiving” (Ibid, p.12) of human error, ‘nature’ bounces relentlessly back. Gunderson et al ascribed this this perspective to the Brundtland Commission, the World Resources Institute, and the International Institute of Sustainable Development, amongst others.

• Nature Anarchic – “dominated by hyperbolic processes of growth and collapse” (Ibid, p.13), they of anarchic persuasion, such as the late economist E. F. Schumacher, are described as perceiving of persistence being only possible whereupon systems are decentralized and “demands on nature” minimal (Ibid), thus the antithesis of ‘Nature Flat’.

• Nature Resilient – comprised elements that evolved into The Adaptive Cycle, and expressed in Joseph Schumpeter economics theorems (1950), and Holling’s early resilience hypotheses (1986), though still a myth, this worldview, perceives of multiple ecological states that cycle through “discontinuous events and nonlinear processes” (Ibid). The principle differential between this myth, and the worldview that descended therefrom is that while it “revolves around reorganisation for renewal”, it viewed landscapes in states of stasis, akin to closed systems (Ibid).

  Over the course of the past three decades a fifth perspective has emerged. Nature Evolving views ecological systems as evolutionary and adaptive (Ibid). Endowed with insights from the wider complex systems domain, including the constructs of “discontinuous change, chaos and order, self-organisation”, and nonlinear system behaviour (Ibid, p.14), this worldview perceives of ecological systems as open and transformative, thus exogenous events, such as wildfire, impact upon system states, and relationships, which, be they biotic or abiotic are symbiotic in nature. Ecologist Simon Levin’s Fragile Domain (2000) is representative of this lens, it being that which has also been applied to this study.

The Adaptive Cycle

Baring a strong similarity to John Wallis’ infinity symbol [∞], which pioneered in 1655, in turn bares a likeness to the Greek letter omega [ὦ], the Adaptive Cycle model strikes a balance between creating and conserving, revolting and remembering, the former of the two pairs periods of invention, experimentation, and testing, the latter of conservation of “accumulated memory” of “surviving experiments” and successes (Resilience Alliance, online, 2013). An organising framework, its validity has been expressed in multiple studies of disruption and recovery in marine, freshwater, and terrestrial ecological systems worldwide (Gunderson et al, 2010; Gunderson and Holling, 2002).

The heuristic cycle shifts through four phases: exploitation [r-phase], conservation [K-phase], release [Ω-phase], and reorganisation [a-phase], which collectively express the integration of creative destruction to the Clements’ successional model. Though the durations of the phases vary, as they process “at radically different rates” (Gunderson et al, 2002, p.26), in toto they express that both stability and instability play a fundamental role in sustaining the integrity of ecosystems over space and time. Thus, preserving ecosystems in “pristine” and “static” states, as advocated by some conservation movements is perceived as doing ‘more harm than good’ (Ibid, p.31), and preserving processes takes precedent over sustaining populations.

The cycle, which is “the fundamental unit of dynamic change” within systems (Ibid, p. 396) involves three variants of learning: incremental, lurching, and transforming, each of which generates a qualitatively different lesson, and “requires a model of at least 3-5 key interacting components”, together with “3 qualitatively different speeds” and nonlinear causation (Ibid, p. 397), multi-stable behaviour, spatially contagious processes, and “creation of structures by biota and reinforcements of biota from structure” (Ibid, p.409), which, amongst other research, built on Holling’s Textural Discontinuity Hypothesis (1992). As discussed at length it the coming chapters and case studies, all of the above features are expressed in wildfire and its behaviours in landscapes.

Discontinuous in space and time, the cycle is a subset of further cycles, which nested, can “generate novel recombinations”, in which “larger and slower components of the hierarchy provide the memory of the past and of the distant to allow recovery of smaller and faster adaptive cycles” (Ibid, p.20), thus a system of systems. Conceptually, nested adaptive cycles allow for, sensu Levi-Strauss (1962), bricolage, wherein elements are recombined and “new mutations and inventions” create novelty “that solves the newly emerged problem or creates new opportunity” (Gunderson et al, 2002, p.89).

Panarchy Evolving

Methodologically, Panarchy necessitates a tripartite approach that bridges the ecological, economic, and social sciences, and which accommodates for “an ever- changing landscape”, thus “continual learning and adaptation”. (Ibid, p. 421). In 2002, Gunderson et al published a call to [research] arms (Ibid), suggesting pursuit of several questions by means of further developing the field of disciplinary enquiry. They that are particularly pertinent to this study are:

• “How are self-organised patterns created and sustained in ecosystems and on landscapes at different scales, from meters and months to thousands of kilometres and millennia?

• How do such patterns, the processes that produce them, and species adaptation sustain critical ecological functions across those scales?

• How can we understand the role of diversity in allowing and modulating adaptability in a wide range of settings, from biodiversity and evolution to the diversity of ideas and its influence on human adaptability to changing circumstances?

• How does the interaction between social, economic, and ecological processes interact to change those patterns?

• How do we develop adaptive capacity in a world of rapidly changing information, technology, and the homogeneity created by globalization?” (Ibid, p.436).

Whereas popular futures narratives tend veer to extremes, of which typical incarnations include the command and control electric dreams vs. nightmares of they as ascribe to Nature Flat; and the pastoral bliss or dystopian ecological crisis hell of Nature Anarchic-ers, whatsoever tomorrow brings it will be not mutually exclusive abiotic and biotic relationships. As technocrats wax ever-increasingly lyrical about the potentialities of a connected world, the Nature Evolving lens helps illuminate the flaws therein. In the words of Holling, “rapidly rising connectivity within global systems, both economic and technological, increases the risk of deep collapse” (Homer-Dixon, 2017) the statement thereof pertinent in light of recent, largely unexpected, ecological and political events.

As relates to wildfire, scant has been the application of Panarchy to fire ecology studies of the past several years. However, a relatively recent chapter by Moritz, Hessburg, and Povak (2011) presented an overview that illustrated there to be further potential in the exploration thereof. An overarching theme of this study from the outset, Panarchy has been discussed in several of its prior outputs, and especially during its early developmental phase.

2.6 Pandora and her Pyxis: Fragments of our Pyrophilic Past

“Be merciful, O purifier, unto the man who is rich in sacrificial food, and who invites Agni to the feast of the gods.” Rigveda, Mandala I, Muller, 1990.

Until 2015, none but aboriginal myth could explain how Australia’s only native palm tree (Livistona mariae) arrived on the continent. Hence, David Bowman and peers decided to investigate if the myth’s story holds any factual ground, to find DNA analysis makes clear it does (Bowman et al, 2015). “The gods from the high North brought the seeds to this place a long time ago”, said the myth, which translated to L.mariae having diverged from its closet relative L.rigida, which is native to an area 1,000km North, between 7-31tya (Ibid, p.33). Which begs the question, is the most universal of all myths - the Origin of Fire myth - rooted in fact, and if it is, what does that tell us about ancient societies and their relationship with the environment?

In 6 BC, archaic Greek poet Sappho wrote, “After creating men, Prometheus is said to have stolen fire and revealed it to men” (Sappho, 1982, p.191). Her words echoed those of Athenian “Prometheuses” [Prometheus worshippers] of a century earlier (Williams, 2014, p.285), while anticipating those of Hesiod in Theogony, in which he spoke of Prometheus cunningly concealing fire in a fennel-stalk, by means of its transportation to humanity (Hesiod, 2007). Sappho’s reference to fennel [Foeniculum vulgare] drew on contemporary pyro practice, the “smouldering burning pith within fennel stems” being ancient Greeks preferred mode of transportation of fire (Wickens, 2001, p.258). However, ancient Athenians spoke not merely of the theft of fire, but of the knowledge to manipulate it, which Prometheus was said to have taken from the Mount Olympian workshop of Athena and Hephaestus. They spoke too of the price that humanity would pay for the acquisition of the insights of the “technologically informed trio” (Ibidem), which, in archaic times was said to manifest in “two evils”, they being “women and disease” (Sappho, 1982, p. 191). The creation of Pandora, she being the Eve of the Athenian world, is variously attributed to Hephaestus, Athena, and Prometheus (Williams, 2014). In Hesiodic mythology, at the behest of Zeus, Hephaestus fashioned Pandora from clay, after which she was dressed by Athena, thereon bestowed an array of skills. Her purpose was to be a vessel of misfortune. But, sensu amplo, it was not the “all-gifted” Pandora, but her pithoigia [opening] of her pyxis [10], as gifted to her by Zeus, that would unleash all manner of misfortune upon humankind (Ibidem; Panoply, 2017: Orlin et al, 2017).

Promethean myth mirrors that of Vedic in the form of Mātariśvan (Oldenberg, 1993), he being the messenger of Vivasvat [the Sun], and epithet of Agni, meaning ‘fire’, but connoting the fire god (Fortson, 2004), who is elsewhere referred to as the ‘heavenly bird that flies’ (Doniger, 1981). In the Sanskrit hymn the Rigveda [11] (circa. 1.5 – 1.2 tya), the Veda attributed the acquisition of fire, which had been hidden from humanity to Mātariśvan, who was said to have brought celestial fire from “the Sky to the Earth” (Nagy, 1996, p.103). But, like Prometheus, Mātariśvan was said to bring forth not merely fire itself, but the knowledge to control it (Ibidem), the means of fire’s transportation not of a fennel stalk, but fire-sticks (Jamison and Brereton, 2014). In a passage affiliated to the venerated Sanskrit Brahmarshi [seer], Visvamitra the Rigveda reads, “Here is the base for fire-churning; here is the readied begetting tool [upper fire-churning stick]. Bring here the clanlord’s lady [lower fire churning stick]. Let us churn Agni in the ancient way” (Ibidem, p.503). The Veda believed Agni’s presence in the fire-sticks came about because he “descends from the Sky as an embryo in rainwater”, to then be absorbed by plants, from which he is then extrapolated by means of the application of friction to wood (Nagy, 1996, p.103). Both Grecian and Vedic tradition associated fire with the origin of the species, which in the case of the latter manifested in Vivasvat as “ancestor of the human race” (Oldenberg, 1993, p.68). Etymological scholars have posited the possibility that Prometheus, meaning ‘the one who steals’, relates to the Vedic verb pra-math, meaning ‘to steal’ (Fortson, 2004), suggesting that the theft of fire myth is of Indo-European origin, which though published as early as 1.5 tya, dates to several millennia earlier, passing from one generation to another via such communication mediums as symbolism, storytelling and song.

Making an exegetical observation, Vedic myth not merely endowed Agni with attributes associated with Prometheus, but with a second member of the Grecian pyrophilic trio. Agni, was hailed as the eldest son of Brahma, he being cited as the ‘creator of the universe’ and “supreme in the triad of great Hindu gods” (Cartwright, 2015, online), whereas Athena was declared the daughter of Zeus, “the supreme Greek god and ruler of all the other gods” (Clayton, 1990, p.191). Both Agni and Athena are associated with knowledge, wisdom, and the intellect, and with the dissemination thereof to mortals. In Grecian myth, the latter was born of the forehead of Zeus, birthed when Hephaestus took an axe to it (Ibidem). While manifold are the myths of origin of Agni, Vedic texts of circ. 3 tya state that Agni was delivered from the forehead of Prajapati (Bodewitz, 1976), he being a creator god that connotes, amongst others, Brahma (Dalal, 2010). Hypotheses of Agni’s Indo-European origin include that of zoolatry [12], wherein Agni was perceived, therein worshipped in bird or bird-like form (Doniger, 1981). Similarly, studies of Athena’s Neolithic anthropological ancestry suggest that her mythology emerged from the zoomorphic beliefs of the Vinča culture [Southeastern and Central Europe, 5.7 – 4.5 tya], in which, it has been posited, like her Predynastic Egyptian counterparts, such as the vulture goddess Nekhbet, she was worshipped in therianthropic [13] mode, as a bird (Dexter, 2011), which over millennia morphed into the form of her syncretic avatar, the little owl [Athene noctua] (Eason, 2008). Agni’s avian associate was Garuda, a “golden-bodied” fire-bird which “the devourer”, carries “the seed of life” (Cartwright, 2015, online): a bird of the Egyptian Bennu’s feather [14], and of other cultural incarnations of the Phoenix, such as the flame-feathered Vermillion bird of Taoist tradition.

Hypotheses of the symbolism of early Indo-European bird deities include that of representing “a continuum of the life force: birth, death, and rebirth” (Dexter, 2011, p.186), which is consistent with the mythology of the therianthropic deities of the Old World. For example, paleoanthropologists have postulated that eggs have been “symbols of regeneration and rebirth” since circa. 14 tya (Ronnberg and Martin, 2010, p. 14). Two centuries after Sappho, Hellenistic and early Roman literary fragments evidence that followers of a religion of which the origin was attributed to the mythical Greek poet Orpheus, believed that a golden-winged primeval deity of procreation, Phanes [later known as Protogonus, meaning “first-born”] had hatched from an egg (Taylor, 1824). Fire and its properties are prominent in Orphic hymn, of which an example reads, “I call strong Pan, the substance of the whole, ethereal, marine, earthly, general soul, Immortal fire; for all the world is thine, and all are parts of thee, O pow’r divine, Come blessed Pan, whom rural haunts delight, come leaping, agile, wand’ring, starry light; The Hours and Seasons [Horai], wait thy high command, and round thy throne in graceful order stand” (Theoi Project, 2017). In Vedic text, an eidetic image of the Orphic egg was attributed to Prajapati: its meaning described as one and the same (D’Costa, 2013). Another egg in this most ancient clutch hatched in Egypt, where a myth spoke to “He Who is Like the Ibis”, the god of wisdom, Thoth, in therianthropic form, laying “the cosmic egg which holds all of creation” (Mark, 2016, online).

In ode to the Rigveda, the Brhaddevata, Vedic hymn spoke of Agni’s flesh becoming the resin of the Indian bdellium tree (Commiphora wightii), his bones becoming pine tree, their marrow sand and gravel, his blood and bile minerals, and his sinews and hair grasses (Cartwright, 2015). Further attributes broadly ascribed to Agni included that of being reborn daily from the wood in which he hides, thus embodying qualities both destructive and beneficent (New World Encyclopedia, 2008). Agni, so Vedic tradition stated, was both torch and torchbearer, illuminating all that he touched, both literally and metaphorically. Additionally, Agni was worshipped as a purifier: that which rids the land of its ills. Grecian myth largely concords in its biotic affiliations with fire, and more generally with the regenerative properties of fire-adapted species, with the genera Pinus, Quercus, and Olea [Olive] attributed particular providence. The pine is affiliated with several Greek deities, including the trident wielding god of, amongst other things, natural hazards, Poseidon, and with the protector and protectress of nature, the god Pan and goddess Artemis. Longevity, indestructibility, immortality, metamorphosis, and cyclic renewal are, in each instance, central narratives of the deities’ respective Pinus mythologies. The oak was sacred to the god Zeus and his wife Hera, the association born of the genus’ tendency to attract, yet often endure lightning strikes, which though observed anecdotally in antiquity, has been evidenced by contemporary dendrological studies (DeRosa, 1983). Revered as the Tree of Life (Ronnberg and Martin, 2010), both the wood and oil of Olea europaea [European olive] fuelled the eternal flames of Grecian temples, including that of Athena Polias [of the city], she of the epithet Parthenos, meaning ‘virgin’ [purity], the Acropolis, Athens. A site inhabited since 3.9 - 3.1 tya at the latest, the original temple complex was destroyed during a Persian invasion that took place circa 2.5 tya. Herodotus wrote of the event, “they pillaged the temple, and set fire to every part of the Acropolis”, but the olive-tree sacred to Minerva [Athena] endured and “the next day after... they saw a shoot risen from the trunk, of a full cubit [approx. 1/3 m] in height” (Herodotus, 1824, p. 241 - 242). Unlikely though it is that a shoot of such length had sprouted within 24 hours, Herodotus’ account nonetheless speaks to a citizenry as was, relatively speaking, accustomed to the behaviours of the flora indigenous to their city-region: an ecologically literate society.

What these and other mythologies suggest is that Indo-European mythologies are more than the sum of their individual parts, in that while they make sense in and of themselves, myths invariably relate to one, more often several others, and in the process form a mythological knowledge system, more specifically, a socio-ecological knowledge system. Greek citizens, like they of both earlier, and later Mediterranean and Near East civilisations, were familiar with the mythologies of the sacred gods and goddesses of their locale, and in particular the deistic protectors of their cities (Kriwaczek, 2010; Leick, 2002), for archaic in origin, the myths were embedded into the everyday activities of their age, including but not limited to ritualistic practices. Furthermore, then, as now, visual communications of various kinds were used as educational and memory aids, including engraving, statuette, and painted image and symbol on artefacts and architectures both temporary and permanent. But, varied though the visual media, the symbolism throughout remained sufficiently consistent to have enabled the wider citizenry to understand its meaning and intent. Arguably, the evolution of formulaic practice in the codification of visual representations – of symbols and pictures – laid the foundations for one of the most pivotal innovations in human history: the advent of writing. Comprised of logograms not letters, cuneiform is, in effect, a form of visual shorthand – of simplifying an image. The succinctness of its style suited a society accustomed to improvisation in the recollection of information, therein adept at working with content akin to bullet-points not script, thus prescriptive quantitatively, but not qualitatively. One might perceive of the Mesopotamians as the originators of branding, for they imbued icons, colours, and numbers with a breadth and depth of meaning that far outstripped that of even the most established of contemporary corporate brand identities. However, whereas it’s not beyond the realms of theoretical possibility that were we able to present a Mesopotamian with a modern-day logo device, such for example as one that embedded the Phoenix motif, they may grasp the fundamentals of its meaning, whereupon we reversed said scenario, and presented their modern-day counterpart with a mythological image authored in the Bronze Age, it’s unlikely they would be able to decipher all but its most rudimentary meaning. Thus, whereupon reading ancient mythologies, whether referring to the original texts, i.e. Mesopotamian tablets and Vedic hymns, or to contemporary interpretations thereof, rather than read the contents at face value, therein literally, we need recognise what’s hidden in plain sight: the codification of the content. Whereupon the Indo-European theft of fire mythologies are considered in the context of state-of-the-art scientific insights into fire’s behaviour, and in particular with respect to fire ecology, severalfold are the ways in which the former suggests that ancient peoples had at least some, and possibly profound understanding of aspects of the latter. Furthermore, whatsoever their level of understanding, their spoken, thereon literary legacy provides indisputable evidence of fire’s role not merely in genus Homo’s physiological and cognition development, but its psychologies, beliefs, and behaviours.

2.7 A Jaguar, a Fire, and a Theft: Americas Variations on the Origin of Fire

“The basic shortcoming of Lévi-Strauss’ formulation is that it ignores the sophistication and power of indigenous conceptions both of “nature” and “society” (a term I have preferred to “culture” because the myth so obviously treats social organization as the structural basis of “culture” in the more general sense).” Turner, 2017.

A work of undisputed significance in establishing the role of extant origin of fire myths within the socialisation practices of Ge indigenous tribes both in, and beyond central Brazil, upon publication, Levi-Strauss’ The Raw and The Cooked (1964) was considered the seminal academic reference in relation thereto, and in some academic circles, of the ‘science of mythology’ more generally. However, in the interim between then and now, subsequent decades-long research has evidenced there to be notable bias in Levi-Strauss’ analyses (Turner, 2017; Liebenberg, 2016), the relevance thereof central to the premise of this thesis, to the structuring of its underlying research programme, and the methodologies applied therein.

True to its French structuralist roots, Levi-Strauss’ analyses of the Ge origin of fire myths “had nothing to say” about their ‘meaning’ (Graeber, 2017, p.xxxviii), instead positing the potential of “empirical categories” as “conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas and combine them in the form of propositions” (Levi-Strauss, 1964, p.1). Having stated his research could “not be carried out according to the Cartesian principle (Ibid, p.5), Levi-Strauss nonetheless applied a distinctly mechanical, as opposed to systemic approach to his analyses, which sought to support a fundamentally compelling hypothesis: that the structure of mythologies mirrors the cognitive structure and functioning of the human mind, wherein external stimuli [i.e. natural phenomena] are subjected to an essentially ‘algorithmic’ decision-making process in which information is disseminated into units that are thereon assigned to a binary category [i.e. day/night, light/dark, good/bad]: a psychology of dualism. The hypothesis is compelling on several levels, most notably the fact that binary oppositions are predominant in the structures of not merely Ge mythologies, and they of the wider Americas, but of archaic Indo-European, African, and South East Asian cultures. Furthermore, binary oppositions are central to the decision-making modus of analogue, digital and hybrid computing, including artificial intelligence and machine learning, and to innumerable societal administrative and organising structures [i.e. classification systems]. Numerous psychologists, psychiatrists, philosophers, and others of whom the research is predominantly concerned with human decision making and its underlying functioning have, and for millennia, identified binary oppositions, and subsets thereof, as integral to how human knowledge is formed. Thus, the basic premise of Levi-Strauss’ Ge mythologies analyses proves not problematic, but useful to this thesis and its aims. However, several aspects of Levi-Strauss’ methodologies and subsequent conclusions are. For example, when discussing both Ge fire and flood myths that bare striking similarities with both living and ancient mythologies from beyond the Americas, Levi-Strauss discussed not the possibility of a common origin thereof, let alone the role of that origin within the Ge myths, and its place within and of the belief system and culture of the Ge tribes. In contrast, contemporary anthropologist Alistair McIntosh (2008) has identified commonalities in the narratives and themes of wide-ranging mythologies that constitute a dialogue between ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, or more specifically, Sumerian, Hebrew, Greek, and Roman mythologies of which the storyline involves a ‘hero’ navigating a series of environmental challenges, including but not limited to fire and/or floods.

When speaking of the myths and of their orators, enactors, and listeners, the Ge tribespersons, Levi-Strauss made not any attempt to relate the myths and their role within Ge socialisation practices to wider society past or present, instead discussing the tribespersons as one might animals in a lab experiment. A consequence thereof, be it consciously or otherwise, is that of ‘othering’ the subjects of his study, this being a matter of profound significance given the treatment of the native peoples of the Americas since European colonisation to present. Furthermore, his tone sounds culturally bias, such for example as when he states, “We have seen that the Bororo myths display a remarkable indifference toward incest: the incestuous person is looked upon as the victim, while the offended against is punished for having taken revenge or for having planned to do so” (Ibid, p.81). The bias inherent therein lies, firstly, in Levis-Strauss’ inference that the act of incest is intended to be taken literally, as opposed to metaphorically. Secondly, its occurrence frequent within Indo- European mythologies (Page, 2014, p.60), incest, of which examples include the mythological couplings of Grecian gods and goddesses Zeus and his sister Hera, and of niece Persephone and uncle Hades, and of Egyptian deities, the siblings Shu and Tefnut, Isis and Osiris, and Set and Nephthys, as for there to be nothing ‘remarkable’ about its prominence in the Ge, or indeed any other ancient or living myths. Additionally, Levi-Strauss’ analyses of the Ge origin of fire myths are presented in a spatiotemporal vacuum: myths stripped of their historical context, but for a short discussion on paleoastronomy; of their wider social context, but for highly sporadic references to some Old World mythologies; and, beyond the relation of astronomy to anticipation of seasonal events such as floods, and the occasional commentary on the colouration, behaviour, or habitat of a floral or faunal species, none but superficial observations of the myths’ environmental context. The matter thereof is especially pertinent both given the immensity of the significance of the natural world and its workings both to the peoples of the Ge tribes, they of the wider-Americas, and indigenous peoples worldwide. Hence, Levis-Strauss explored not the possibility that Ge origin of fire myths may exhibit such sophistication in their structure as to simultaneously encode abstract philosophical constructs and commentaries, with the remnants of ancient, but nonetheless once real-world observations on the workings of natural systems [i.e. faunal and/or floral metamorphoses and transitions in the environment more generally]. Might origin of fire myths be the original transdisciplinary works: where the prehistorical roots of the fields today known as the sciences, the arts, and the humanities first-combined? We might never know. Either way, Straussian structuralism’s absence of attention to the meaning of myths, and to the codification of that meaning, renders it an inadequate model to serve the Ge origin of fire myths contextual justice.

As relates to this thesis, the foremost issue of contention with respect to the analyses of Levi-Strauss is his “savage” vs. “scientific” mind proposition. Bringing context thereto, the Oxford dictionary defines ‘savage’ as “an offensive word for somebody who belongs to a people that is simple and not developed”, or “a cruel and violent person” (Oxford Dictionaries, 2018). The labelling of both ancient and indigenous peoples and their understanding of the world as such is as bias intellectually as it is offensive, speaking to a by-gone imperialist era in which one worldview - the Western worldview - reigned over all others: Empire as an act of cultural, economic and social imposition. Put succinctly, The Raw and The Cooked is a case study in disciplinary, not transdisciplinary research practice, and a tome of which the overall tone was ‘of its time’, which may account for why, unlike some of Levis-Strauss’ other works, readership demand is so low the work has not been republished in print in some years.

Anthropologist and human rights advocate for indigenous people, the late Professor Emeritus Terry Turner, spent five decades (1962 – 2014) researching social organisation, kinship, myth, ritual, values, and inter-ethnic relations of the Ge speaking Kayapo peoples of the Amazon basin. While the greater part of his research remains, as yet, unpublished, hailed as “one of the great achievements of anthropological theory” (Graeber, 2017, p.xxxix), Turner’s writings on the origin of fire myths of the Kayapo, finally went to print posthumously last year. The “structural inversion” of the “painfully effete” and “politically conservative” Levi-Strauss, Turner was “academically marginal” and “politically radical” (Ibid, p.xxiv). Where the former produced “static models” the latter produced “dynamic” ones (Ibid), and whereas Levi-Strauss published prolifically, but had limited, if any real political influence, in his lifetime the latter published not a single book, but was a prominent and influential figure in the creation and upholding of rights for both the Amazonian peoples he studied, and indigenous peoples worldwide, both formally, as president of Survival International, USA, and as a founding member of the American Anthropological Association’s Ethic and Human Rights committees, and informally through his influence on the world of popular entertainment through, amongst other affiliations, the Avatar Alliance Foundation [15].

His contributions to anthropology “breath-taking in their scope” (Smith, 2015), Turner’s structuralism drew on notably more disciplines than that of Levi-Strauss. Turner synthesised both Levi-Straussian methodologies with they of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics [16], his intent that of establishing what the Ge origin of fire myths were “trying to say” (Ibid, p.xxxvii). Turner’s analyses operated on not one, but two levels, the first examining the structural relations of a myth’s symbolic elements, the second its subjective meaning – its ‘message’ (Ibid). Turner described his approach as, “a new conception of myth structure as a hierarchically organized system of transformations of a single set of symbolic oppositions that recurs as the basis for each successive episode of the narrative” (Turner, 2017, p.44). His analyses revealed that the structures of Ge origin of fire myths “as wholes” are metaphoric, containing isomorphic, homologous and referential aspects, thus “not context-free”, and critically, in contrast to Levis-Strauss, Turner found that not merely were the myths localised in terms of “the content of their elements” [i.e. points of floral and faunal reference], but more broadly (Ibid). More pertinently still, where Levis-Strauss saw “only static aspects” [i.e. classifications] of the social and cultural world, Turner saw “the processes through which these aspects are produced or maintained” (Ibid, p.45).

“The most radical and distinctive perspectivist claim for the uniqueness of Amazonian cosmologies and epistemological perspectives as contrasted with Western ideas... is that Amazonians do not, after all, conceive of nature, as represented by animals, and culture as mutually distinct and contrastive categories, in the manner of Levi-Straussian structuralism... Culture and humanity are not limited to humanity, but to encompass nature as well” (Ibid, p.222)

As with the Indo-European theft of fire myths, the Kayapo’s are structurally sophisticated stories that speak to the origin of the control of fire by human societies and, for both better and worse, the ongoing consequences thereof. Like their ancient Vedic, Greek, and Roman counterparts, the myths employ culturally-relevant symbols and scenarios to convey how humanity relates to its environment. The contents of the Ge myths collated and documented by Levis-Strauss in combination with the analyses of the Kayapo variants by Turner support the general hypothesis as discussed in 2.6, that being that origin of fire myths having descended from a common prehistoric archetype, the rationale thereof derived from the myths’ common structure, narrative, meaning, and intent [i.e. social context]. In all instances the myths are multi- generational edutainment tools – their purpose not solely that of entertaining, but of educating listeners, which would explain why, fundamentally, no matter their number, the many variations remain one-in-the-same story. Turner’s observations of how and why the contents of the Kayapo myths became modified throughout space and time may help explain how and why origin of fire myths worldwide diversified from a point of common origin. Bringing context thereto, for all its variations, the Kayapo origin of fire myth bares several recognisable hallmarks. Firstly, it describes ‘the theft’ of the control of fire. Secondly, that theft is undertaken by a mortal/s, he/they, being a mortal/s that wrongs a being of immortal status – a jaguar [17]. Thirdly, like its Indo-European counterparts, the Kayapo origin of fire myth attributes humanity’s transition from a state of ‘nature’ to – in the words of Turner ‘society’, in they of Levis-Strauss ‘culture’ – to the theft. Fourthly, that theft comes at a price, which though not as explicitly expressed in some of the Kayapo and wider Ge variants, is nonetheless familiar in others, in which, in consequence of the theft of fire, humanity need indefinitely live in fear of reprisal from the jaguar, in both the dietic and ecological [18] sense. Fifthly, the Kayapo myth is a socio-ecological construct – concerned not only with humanity’s relationship with itself – with socialisation, but with its relationship with non-human world. One might posit that there is much for reflection in the fact that, though the origin of fire myth remains central to the socialisation practices of both the Kayapo and other indigenous communities around the world, it has become all but lost within they of the Global North, where awareness of its variants tends be restricted to academics and others with an interest in Classics.

The analyses of both Levis-Strauss and Turner reveal that within the confines of the Amazon basin any changes to the origin of fire myth are restricted to but a few components [i.e. the matter of whether a boy stole fire single-handedly, or with the assistance of fellow village members]. Expanding the investigative territory further, and from South to North America, and while the structure and message remain the same, yet further components have changed, as evidenced in this extract from the Apache origin of fire myth, “The fireflies pursued the Fox to his burrow and informed him that, as punishment for having stolen fire from them and spread it abroad over the land, he should never be permitted to use it himself”. (Lewis, 2018, p.482). Anthropomorphism being fundamental to Native American cosmology, which “look back to a remote time when the difference between people and animals was blurred, before humans emerged as a distinct race of beings on Earth”, and thus “animal people” were “forerunners” of modern humans (Luthin, 2002, online), may explain why a ‘fox’ and not a primal boy or man ‘stole’ fire in the Apache myth variant. Hence, one might posit that, whereupon, like languages, the origin of fire myth was mapped worldwide, its variations would reflect the migratory paths of ancient peoples, and the ways in which their culture, society and other modes of expression evolved in space and time: a record of the real-world transition from ‘nature’ to ‘culture/society’ to which the myth itself speaks. Furthermore, myths, like languages, make evident that the evolution of human systems mirror they of non-human systems, as their internal logic bearing striking resemblance [i.e. species – be that species plant, animal, language, or myth - adapting by means of making fit for localised purpose].

While Levis-Strauss was correct in his conclusion that Ge myths, including they of the Kayapo, use fire and cooking as an analogy of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’, more specifically ‘society’, his interpretation was far too simplistic (Ibid, p.121), for Ge peoples, like Native Americans, perceive not of humans and of their activities as being mutually exclusive from the natural world. Where Straussian structuralism revolves around notions of nature and society in states of perpetual stasis, thus of classifications as remain indefinitely – hierarchies set in metaphorical stone – Kayapo myths describe a world of transitional states, where boundaries are blurred and none less so than they between humans and their environment. Turner’s analyses of the meanings of the Kayapo myths make evident that transformations “play a far more important and dynamic role in mythical thought than structuralist formulations have so far recognised” (Ibid, p.121), which correlates with the analyses on the meaning and structure of Indo-European theft of fire myths as detailed in 2.6 above. In contrast to Levis-Strauss, who essentially reduced the Ge myths’ structures to ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenarios, Turner identified a triadic structure (Ibid, p. 124) that may be described as ‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’ [“juxtaposition”, “interaction”, and “final reconciliation”], the ‘during’ [interaction] important because it constitutes the conversion [therein ‘link’] from/between one state to/and another. Qualitatively, Turner described the myths’ tri-part modality as “nonlinear”, “cyclical”, expressive of “repetitive time” (p.139), “forming a hierarchy of levels of temporal experience” (Ibid, p.136). Relating Kayapo myth structure to psychology and to the cognitive functioning of the human mind, where Straussian structuralism spoke to dyadic conceptions of reality, Turnerian structuralism spoke to triadic: to cooking not as an ‘end-state’, but as ‘catalyst’. Consequently, though in agreement with Levis-Strauss that the structure of myth and of the mind are homologous, Turner drew this conclusion from reasoning inverse to that of Straussian structuralism, that being both myth and mind as “symbolic structures” that enable sense-making of objects, as representative of external stimuli [i.e. events] (Ibid, p.145). In short, myths as avatars of the mind, which, one might speculate, is a contributory factor to their enduring legacy. The sustained relevance of myth in human societies, and in particular as relates to humanity’s relationship with nature, is evidenced in a creative work closely affiliated to Turner, it being the highest-grossing film [$2,782,275,172>] on record (Box Office Mojo, 2018).

Directed by James Cameron, Avatar, like the Ge and other Amazon basin myths that inspired and informed its script, operates on several levels. Set, in reference to Greek mythology, on the fictional moon of ‘Pandora’, Avatar brought to 3D animated life one of the most contentious real-world issues of both past and present: destruction of virgin habitats and the indigenous communities that inhabit them by mining and extraction companies that work to an imperialist ideology. A myth of myths, in the sense that it drew from multiple mythical sources to author anew, Avatar challenges the idea that, in and of itself, technology will solve the ethical and environmental challenges that stem from humanity having failed to find a way to live within Earth’s resource limits, and with that, within the workings of the natural world. However, a carefully structured critique it may be, but its message is not negative. Having drawn on leading-edge developments from across the scientific and technological arena, and in disciplines as diverse as genetic and biological engineering, biotechnology biocomputing, biomimetics, and satellite and space communications, together with speculations from leaders in the futurism field, Cameron, like the myths, cultures, and belief systems from which he drew inspiration, created a virtual window into a future world without boundaries between humanity and its environment, but for in the minds of they too ecologically-illiterate to understand the implications of their imperialist actions.

In his review of Levis-Strauss’ The Raw and The Cooked, Deon Liebenberg wrote, “Without this mediating culture humans would be completely absorbed in the world of nature – as happened to that former master of culture, the jaguar, in the Ge myths” (2016, p.24). What Turner’s analyses made evident is that, in their worldview, the Kayapo are, and completely, absorbed in nature. Thus, a mediating role their myths may play, but that role is more complex than drawing definitive lines around human and non-human systems. Myths have, do, and doubtless will continue to become manifest in many guises, and in the process reveal profound insights into the psychology, cognitive functioning, and resulting beliefs, values, and behaviours of their authors, and of the societies of which they are part. Humanity’s relationship with fire, and more specifically, with wildfire, embedded so deeply within the development of our species and its antecedents, both mythological and other anthropological studies provide of invaluable insights into how and why human societies have, do, and may relate to wildfire in the future. Whereupon, as proposed in this thesis, WUI communities, and human society at large were to embrace ‘living with fire’, theirs would be the need to embrace a Kayapo-like relationship with their environment. Theirs would need be the humility to accept that ancient, some still living, cultures and beliefs systems which, for centuries, were touted as being inferior to their own, exhibit a depth and breadth of understanding of the natural world and its workings, and their relation thereto, as became all-but-lost in those of the Global North. Bed-time stories the Kayapo Origin of Fire myths may be, but within and of their society, and their socialisation practices, they are taken every bit as seriously as the ilk of Fire Building Codes by architects, planners, and real estate developers around the world.

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.

2.9 Walk like an Egyptian. Think Like a Mesopotamian: Coding and Cities at the Dawn of Civilisation

“Mesopotamian civilisation behaved both like a living organism and as if it were governed by natural laws.” Kriwaczek, 2010.

Pictograms, including proto-cuneiform, were the preeminent visual mode of communication used in ancient Mesopotamia and in the wider Indo-European region during the Chalcolithic period [Late Neolithic, known as the Copper Age in the three- age system]. Whereas today, and senso lato for the sum of the post-pictogram period [i.e. the advent of the Phoenician alphabet], information is largely communicated as a unidirectional stream of individuated data units, which be they comprised letters or bits, words or bytes, are arranged, if not technically, then conceptually, in two dimensional space, the meaning thereof explicit with respect to the content’s spatiotemporal context, the peoples of the Chalcolithic conveyed information in a form of coding of which the nature was, in essence, four dimensional and bi- directional in construct. Whereas the script within this thesis, and indeed in all Western literary works since the arrival of syllabic writing systems, including their antecedent logosyllabic forms, such as Egyptian hieroglyphics, necessitate the aforementioned structure, pictograms, including proto and early cuneiform did not. In the words of anthropologist Gwendolyn Leick, “Generally, the information could be distributed in random fashion on the tablet surface. There was no general direction in which to decode the signs” (Leick, 2002, p.42). Therein, unlike the contemporary written word, cuneiform may have been “encoded in a linguistically non-specific form”, thus sufficiently flexible as to be read by “ethnically and linguistically diverse” communities (Ibidem, p.43), thus a universal language millennia before the advent of computing codes, such as Hypertext Markup Language [HTML]. Bringing context thereto, we need consider how, more broadly, Indo-European peoples of the period communicated.

Long before the evolution of the written word, be they Homo sapiens, or other members of the genus Homo, early humans exchanged information through a rich assemblage of audio and visual mediums, of which some are hypothesised to have worked in unison. So ancient are some of these mediums as to pre-date the arrival of our species, for example while we know not the date of origin of spoken language, given that the anatomy of H.heidelbergensis evidences the species had capacity to hear human-like auditory patterns some several hundred thousand years ago, and the scientific consensus is that by <100 tya spoken language was “completely formed” (von Petzinger, 2016, p.4), one can state with reasonable assurance that by the Chalcolithic period, the spoken word, and derivatives thereof, including poetry and song, were the pre-eminent means of information exchange. The latter statement is supported by the fact that the earliest known literary works were written in poetry, hymn and verse, i.e. modes that lend themselves to auditory communication, examples thereof including all the above referenced Vedic, Greek, and Native Americans’ texts. Visual communications are similarly ancient in origin. For example, engraving emerged between 540 – 430 tya (Ibidem), and while we know not if the intention of the original act was to store or communicate information [i.e. notations], analysis of a compelling collection of archaeological artefacts suggests that the development thereof was, if not universally, at least in part established by the Upper Palaeolithic (Ibidem; Rappenglück, 2014; Bradshaw Foundation, 2015). Further communications mediums that were firmly established by 3 tya include colour symbolism, of which the date of origin is unknown, but potentially as early as 300 - 230 tya, painted image, currently dated to circa. 41 tya, and figurative art, dated to 40 tya (von Petzinger, 2016). In the words of paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, symbolic art was born not in a vacuum, nor overnight, but of “fully modern people living in a cultural world overlying the natural one” (Ibidem, p. 115), the use of the term fully modern pertinent, for neurologically Upper Palaeolithic peoples were little different to contemporary humans, thus their use of symbols, and of communication in general is illustrative of how both the use and the context thereof is, like our species, evolving, as are our thought processes, thus thinking.

Since time immemorial, natural phenomenon have been utilised in codification and communication. For example, for millennia, forms of floriography have conveyed messages through the attribution of meaning to the type and arrangement of flowers. As relates to fire, smoke signalling is indigenous to numerous extant and extinct ancient cultures, including they of Aboriginal Australians, Native Americans, Classical Greece, and China’s Zhou Dynasty. However, humans aren’t the only species that can ‘decrypt’ smoke, and other signals that embed data on changes within their environment. Indeed, plants “are intimately connected” to their surroundings (Chamovitz, 2012, p.5), and both sense and process biochemical, thermodynamical, hydrological, and physical data around the circadian clock. Subsequent to Darwin’s early interrogations of the sensing and actuating processes of plants (1880), the field has evolved and expanded to influence innumerable domains, including computer science, engineering, robotics, and, central to this thesis, complexity theory, as expressed in several seminal works (Holland, 2014, 2002, 1994, 1992; Bentley and Corne, 2002; Mitchell, 1998, Mitchell et al, 1993; von Bertalanffy, 1969; von Neumann and Burks, 1967; Turing, 1952; Whitehead, 2015). “An ongoing revolution” (Mitchell, 1998, p.1), of which outputs are intertwined with the broader spectrum of transdisciplinary systems research, including evolutionary computation, as exemplified in Richard Dawkins’ Biomorph Land, which, a virtual territory within a software programme, simulated the processes of cumulative selection (2006), the potentialities for biologically informed, inspired, and/or integrative computing systems are akin to they of writing upon the advent of the Phonetic alphabet. Relatively embryonic biocomputing may be, but the legacy of several decades of development is an over-arching systems architecture and language sufficiently developed to support wide-ranging applications within the built environment.

Within architecture and urban design, both in analogue and digital, and organic and inorganic form, biocomputing has been extensively applied to form finding at the level of materials (Oxman, 2012, 2010; Iwamoto, 2009), structures (Brownell and Swackhamer, 2015; Dunn, 2012; Spiller and Armstrong, 2011; Menges and Ahlquist, 2011; Hensel et al, 2010, 2004; Reas and McWilliams, 2010; Hasdell, 2010; Garcia, 2009; Spiller, 2006; Hight and Perry, 2006; Frazer, 1995), cities (Verbes, 2014; Poletto and Pasquero, 2012; Gissen, 2010; Batty, 2007), and transport networks (Sharp and Graham, 2015; Armstrong and Adamatzky, 2013; Otto, 2011; Tero et al, 2010). However, the codification of building codes remains relatively unchartered terrain, with two of the foremost conceptually compelling essays to date they of Karl Chu (2004) and Edward Eigen (2004), who, in the words of the former, explored the “monadology of genetic architecture on the Turing Dimension” (Ibid, p. 96). But, Chu and Eigen interrogated not site-specific potentialities for biocomputing, instead considering generic genetic applications.

A study of which the foci is not a virtual biomorphic land, but real-world ‘pyromorphic’ wild-urban interface lands, which, as I type, are engulfed in fire- complexes so fierce as to be breaking records (Park, 2018; Sanders, 2017), the above cited works, together with the extensive body of literature referenced throughout this thesis, constitute conceptual building blocks as will be applied to what, in effect, is a hybrid of parameterization and simulation, in the sense that the paradigm in development is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but a fusion of both.

As scenes that have been likened to ‘hell’ unfold both within and beyond the case study regions (IBT, 2017), all the while, persons of wide-ranging professions, from politicians and policymakers more generally, to fire chiefs and foresters, architects and planners, journalists and media commentators, and more, heatedly dispute the causations and solutions to what has been coined ‘the wildfire problem’ (Gill et al, 2013) not, perhaps, since the outset of the inaugural Urban Revolution has it been so pertinent to reconsider the codification of building codes. Technically, as discussed later, biocomputing presents manifold means of monitoring the environment in real- time, thus empowering decision making, and at speeds as were unthinkable in times past. However, as has become abundantly clear in the past 24 months [19], information can be used for intentions both good and bad. Thus, today, as in UruKAgina’s age, data encryption, and not least as relates to codes and coding, and in all their many forms, remains not merely a useful, but in some regards, imperative tool.

2.10 Evolution of Building Codes: From Ur to the Wildland Ur-ban Interface

“The rivers would shift their beds, inundations destroyed cultivated areas, sand dunes encroached on deserted villages within weeks – all factors that threatened the desire for permanence and anchorage to a place” Leick, 2001.

While we know not when codes first emerged, we do know that for as long as humans have recorded their thoughts in verbal and written verse, codes, both moral and technical, have been a feature thereof. Prior to the emergence of writing, codes were conveyed through the medium of storytelling. The message therein that if mortals behave in ways that displease almighty forces, be it a flood, eruption, plague and/or more, all [experiential] hell will break lose.

Inscribed on monumental stone tablets, the earliest written civic codes date to the Bronze Age. The earliest known, The Reforms of UruKAgina [University of Oxford, 2017], were scribed in Sumerian cuneiform in southern Mesopotamia during the Early Dynastic period [ED III], over four thousand years ago. The Code of Ur-Nammu, which was authored by the king of the Third Dynasty of Ur [Ur III], it being the city to which the birth of ur-banism is ascribed, is the earliest known extant civic code. However, the most well-known is the Code of Hammurabi [c.3.8ty], which scribed by the sixth Babylonian king, is representative of the distinctly biblical formula that both these, and other early civic codes followed. Topped and tailed with an epilogue and prologue in which its author praised divinities, including Marduk, the chief deity of Babylon, and his father Eu, the god of water, the code reads like commandments. Covering myriad aspects of civic-life, the Code of Hammurabi comprised 282 laws. Not to be taken lightly, punishments as were decreed to those that contravened its contents were severe, of which one example is as follows:

“If a fire break out in a man’s house and a man who goes to extinguish it cast his eye on the furniture of the owner of the house, and take the furniture of the owner of the house, that man shall be thrown into the that fire”. Code #25, Harper, 1904.

In a landscape as inherently dynamic as that of Mesopotamia, where, prior to the advent of agriculture and settlement peoples built temporary architectures, which not dis-similar to reed structures that are still made by Marsh Arabs today, migrated as inundations necessitated, the emergence of architectural and codification permanence [i.e. codes written ‘in stone’, not spoken] went hand in hand. The Urban Revolution, like all revolutions, was not merely one of practice, but of thought. Then, as now, ideas were expressed in both physical and virtual form. Indeed, even cities had the architectural equivalent of avatars, one city symbolic, the other administrative and residential, whereas others, such as Eridu, were simultaneously perceived in both their physical and metaphysical form, which in the latter’s case was the “site of creation” (Ibid, p. 29). Likewise, then, as now, the climate remained not in a state of stasis, thus, over time, shifting local, regional, and global regimes reduced the productivity of some city-states, while increasing that of others. Cities came and went. Peoples came and went. Hence, paradoxically, at epochal not human times scales, that perceived as ‘permanent’ was, in fact, impermanent.

“No timber shall be used in any wall of any building where stone, brick, cement concrete, or iron are commonly used, except inside lintels, as herein provided, and brace blocks not more than eight inches in length.” Smith, 1909.

Stepping, once again, forward from the Bronze to the Information age, now, as then, codes continue to be scripted, and, in the instance of civic codes, the medium thereof remains writing. However, whereas Mesopotamian codes typically featured a dozen or two building specifications, today their sum is typically several orders of magnitude greater. As relates to this study, and to the codes that regulate construction in the WUI of the western U.S., the International Building Code [IBC] (ICC, 2017a) the International Fire Code [IFC] (ICC, 2016), and the International Wildland Urban Interface Code [IWUIC] (ICC, 2017b), are among the International Code Council documents that are fundamental to the contents and framework thereof.

California, the foremost fire-prone region in the U.S., operates building codes so comprehensive that the fire code alone numbers some several hundred pages (CBSC, 2016; CBSC, 2018). One of several regional and municipal codes currently in operation in the U.S. (Moore and Wilson, 2013), and subject to an ongoing and open development process, the code is designed, among other things, to “provide minimum standards to increase the ability of a building to resist the intrusion of flame or burning embers projected by a vegetation fire” (CBSC, 2016, p.401). In acknowledgement of the heterogeneity of wildfire behaviour within the landscape, therein level of risk to property and life, the code operates in concert with the fire hazard severity zones designated under the California Public Resources Code (CLI, 2017), of which the risk variants are Moderate, High, and Very-High. Areas either designated the responsibility of state, or of local agencies, the code’s scope is extensive, covering topics as diverse as emergency planning and preparedness [i.e. evacuation and lockdown drills], fire service requirements [i.e. access roads, and water supplies], building services and systems [i.e. emergency and standby power systems], fire and smoke protection features [i.e. guards as prevent embers entering ventilation shafts], material specifications [i.e. fire-retardant finishes], fire protection systems [i.e. fire alarms and sprinklers], and means of egress [i.e. specifications for evacuation routes and features thereof].

In toto, the California Fire Code [CFC] sets out specifications for wide-ranging residential, civic, industrial, and commercial building types, from airport hangers to garages, farms to factories, lumber yards to marinas, hospitals to schools, and more. However, the foci of this thesis low-story residential homes in WUI areas, and more specifically, the material and information systems as are integral to the architectural thinking, practice, and codes thereof, and their relation to site [i.e. regional fire ecology], but a small portion of the CFC is relevant thereto. Hence, upon review of the latest CFC edition and revisions (CBSC, 2016; CBSC, 2018), as relates to the protection of human life upon the occurrence of a wildfire, and to all such matters as fall beyond the scope of this study [i.e. specifications as relate to positioning of fire lanes for fire trucks; location and distribution of water hydrants and tanks; storage of hazardous materials and power-supplies; and location and dimensions of emergency escape and rescue openings, such as corridors, doorways, and windows] it is proposed that which this thesis sets forth [i.e. its theoretical tenants and the codes developed therefrom] will operate in concert therewith.

Nonetheless, paradigmatically, this study, its findings, and the conclusions therefrom, are born of a position at odds with that of the CFC, and in turn the IBC, IFC, and IWUIC. Whereas the latter evolved from earlier codes as were scripted in an era in which it was assumed wildfire not merely superfluous to the functioning of ecological systems, but damaging thereto, the codes as scripted by this author have evolved from findings as assert the contrary. Thus, whereas the above stated codes, and the policies from which they stem have largely treated fire ecology as a footnote, this thesis not merely embeds the discipline thereof, but builds its thinking, its practice, and its codes thereupon, while in acknowledgement that, though approaching one in the same subject from different perspectives, we collectively seek the same outcome: saving lives, together with the integrity of the landscapes we, humanity, call ‘home’.

2.11 Coding Cornu Copiae: From Cuneiform to Chromosomes

“Physically ambiguous, yet charged with political, social, and formal intent, codes operate as the architecture of architecture, creating its preconditions and shaping its production”, Huge, 2004.

All too seldom the subject of critical enquiry, building codes are neither innocuous nor neutral, yet they codify the boundaries, both conceptual and technical, to which architecture and urban design must adhere (Moore and Wilson, 2013; Huge, 2004). Today, as in Mesopotamian times, building codes are typically prescriptive, enforced top-down, and “stasis in nature”, hence devoid of such dynamism as allows for adaption to shifting environmental and social states (Hakim, 2008, p.37). But, while several authors have spoken to the need for codes to accommodate for states of emergence, thus embed such properties as complexity, self-organisation, and generative processes (Chu, 2004; Eigen, 2004; Hakim, 2008), as relates both to wildfire, and to natural hazards generally, none have yet undertaken a comprehensive ecological and Earth systems enquiry by means of expanding beyond broad conceptual brushstrokes, this being one of the several knowledge gaps this thesis seeks to fill.

However, works both serious and satirical (Sorkin, 1993, 2004) have highlighted the need to re-evaluate building codes by means of acknowledging that “cities are units of human accountability to the planet”, more specifically, a planet in perpetual evolution, thus there need for codes of which there is “no final version”, for works in progress are they (Ibid, 1993, p.11). Ethically, present-day codes, like they of Nammu and Hammurabi, revolve around a philosophical construct that in Utilitarianism would become known as the ‘greatest happiness principle’ (Bentham, 1781). The measure thereof taken in the ‘here and now’, building codes accommodate not for their medium to long-term impact upon local and global abiotic and biotic systems. Unintended consequences result therefrom, including water scarcity, biodiversity loss, and events that though termed ‘natural hazards’ are, as a report by the World Bank (2010) discussed, decidedly unnatural in causation. Disasters by “stealth” (Kieffer, 2013, p.xiv), these events are born of human causes, which within the built environment are primarily policies and codes that govern the design, materiality, production, and maintenance thereof. But, perceptions, of what constitutes ‘unnatural’ disasters, like the circumstances in which they develop, remain not in states of stasis.

As miners poured into 19th Century California, wooden homes, offices and stores increasingly densely populated its burgeoning cities. In the absence of the ilk of water hydrants, the outcome was inevitable: fire upon fire – historic ‘disasters by stealth’ - swept through the state’s towns and cities. The funds from the gold rush aplenty, for a time, phoenix-like, buildings would burn, to then be swiftly replaced by replicas, or all but. History nigh repeating itself, as occurred in London in the aftermath of the Great Fire, in 1852 San Francisco introduced fire prevention measures, including the creation of a fire-district in which “fire-resistant” construction was mandated by a building code (Muir-Wood, 2016, p.77). Thus, brick, and inorganic materials in general, were to become materials of choice for a time. However, unlike London, San Francisco lies atop one of the world’s most active fault lines. Hence, in attempting to solve one problem, policymakers, planners and architects had unwittingly propagated another, which no matter the sizeable efforts made by they with vested commercial interests to perpetuate “earthquake denialism” (Ibid, p. 61), came at a human cost, as the architectural equivalent of houses of cards tumbled time and again. Echoing the rhetoric of some present-day architects, ‘the Committee on Bricks, Stones, and Timber’ posited it possible to fire-proof wood (Ibid, p.78). But, predictably, biochemistry got the better of them.

Today, as in the late 1800s, California’s building codes continue to stipulate fire- resistant materials, systems, and assemblies be used in construction. Where appropriate, inter-state regions, such as municipalities, can stipulate additional requirements. For example, some of the foremost fire-prone areas in San Diego county require ‘shelter in place’, such as a fire-proofed below ground-level bunker, to be integrated into all new-build homes (Mann et al, 2013, p.446). However, for the all the scientific and technological developments of the late 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries, as discussed in the forthcoming case studies, now as before, wildfires reduce many buildings to their foundations, incinerating their contents in the process. Humanity’s relationship with wildfire, and the ‘wild’ in general, as complex as it is contentious, metaphorical smoke and mirrors obscure the means of mitigation. But, that solutions are needed is clear, as highlighted by Maranghides et al, “WUI fire construction codes and standards, test methods and best practices are in their technical infancy”, thus “a significant body of research is necessary to improve ... and to address the WUI fire problem” (2015, p. 2).

In conclusion, modes of codification of information remain not constant in space and time. Throughout human history, peoples of different places and cultures have recorded concepts and constructs using a wide array of techniques. In the words of paleoanthropologist Genevieve von Petzinger, “the first glimmers of symbolic thought” predate our species, emerging 3.5mya (2016, p.23). Long before letters, colour symbolism, signs, and configurations thereof, such as sequences of ochre dots, were among the earliest means of visual codification. Starting with pictographs, thereon ideographs, and rebus writing, throughout the period in which the UruKAgina, Nammu, and Hammurabi codes were authored the foundations of the predominant codification mode of present were laid, the process thereof developed by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Greeks, who collectively created the Phonetic alphabet. The latter’s linearity and its singular direction of travel, wherein the reader follows a literal ‘line of thought’, as opposed to reading a matrix of inter-related data that spans space, time, and physical and metaphysical worlds, speaks to more than communication. Like myths, our codes mirror the worldviews of their authors, and the societies of which they are a part. They tell us how problems were/are perceived, thus context in which possible solutions are/were developed. Thus, whereupon we are to radically rewrite our codes, in this instance, WUI building codes, we need first understand the worldview that underpins the pre-existing codes, how and why that worldview developed, how and why it limits our potential in addressing the problems we face, and what other worldviews – what other lenses – we may look through when authoring alternative codes.

2.12 Wildland Fire Policy in Précis

“Sauer’s legacy challenged the deterministic tendencies inherent in the culture-area hypothesis with a more dynamic version: landscapes themselves reflect a history of human activities”. Coughlan, 2015.

Forming the foundations upon which societies and their various constructions are built, policies reflect, in, epochally speaking, near-to-real time, the values, beliefs, and aspirations of they that govern states, nations, and empires. Within the western U.S, one could summarise the over-arching ‘policy’ of the indigenous peoples as ‘living with fire’, wherein for not centuries, but millennia, Native Americans, as had innumerable generations of H.sapiens and their antecedents before them, organised their societies in symbiosis with wildland fire, and more specifically, its spatiotemporal cycles within the landscapes they inhabited. Theirs was an approach as sought not control, but where appropriate, curation of fire, for they recognised its regenerative role, and thus its potentialities for purposes including construction, hunting, and defence.

Early frontierspersons, including miners, loggers, and sheep and cattle ranchers, commonly considered wildfire as integral to sustaining the ecologies of the territories they colonised (Kilgore, 2007; Pyne, 1982). Likewise, foresters and they that directly observed ecological processes [i.e. in-situ scientists] tended favour wildfire’s presence, such as the first Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Gifford Pinchot, who wrote of wildfire’s governance of the “distribution and character of forest growth” (Pinchot, 1899). However, they that followed in the frontierspersons footsteps, more specifically they that were so eager to capitalise on the many riches that the newly colonised lands could bring forth as to afford themselves not time to understand the workings thereof, imposed policies and codes as were at odds thereto. As so often case, they that were responsible had acted in good faith, for they believed that fire was the nemesis of the territories of which they had taken ownership.

The advent of wildland fire suppression is intimately bound to the creation of Yellowstone National Park, which established in the late 1800s, befell to the management of the military, which from 1886 onwards fought all but fires as were so remote as to be beyond their reasonable reach, the policy thereof becoming the precedent for the various national parks as were established subsequent thereto. But, nationally, socio-political and press and media narratives of wildfire were, by and large, fuelled not by concerns for ecological, but for human systems, namely regional and national economies, built infrastructure including settlements, together with the transport networks that connect them, and the mining and logging activities that facilitated their construction and maintenance. Then, as remains the case today, as European settlers spread ever further into fire-prone territories, a largely unintended consequence thereof was that of increasing wildfire ignition rates, such for example as occurred in the region of the Great Lakes in the period 1869 – 1918, during which logging towns, cities, and numerous lives were lost to several fire complexes. Yet, the many wildfires of the 19th century were but a warm-up act.

1910 was, through the eyes of European settlers, the veritable ‘Waterloo’ of humanity vs. wildfire. A year in which pragmatist philosopher William James stated, “If now - and this is my idea - there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against ‘Nature’, the injustice [inequality] would tend to be evened out” (James, 1910, online), writ the wildfire policies and the codes derived therefrom for the coming century. Of the numerous wildfire complexes that populated the 1910 U.S. fire season, the foremost known is the Big Blowup of August 20-21. Burning “its way into the American conscience as no other fire had done” (USDA Forest Service, n.d) the complex consumed over 3m Northwest acres, 7.5b board feet of timber, and 85 lives (Forest History Society, n.d). Ignited by a matrix of both human and natural causes, the complex’s intensity and severity was born of a combination of events including drought, hurricane-force winds and an abundance of highly flammable fuel in the form of the indigenous members of the genus Pinus.

In the aftermath thereof, and until reforms in the late 1960s and early 1970s, both in national parks and beyond, fire suppression became the over-arching wildfire policy. Aligning to the assumption that wildfires could be controlled by human action, a series of federal acts were passed. Management of federal forests having been transferred to the USDA Forest Service in 1905, the Weeks Act of 1911 expanded both the territory and powers thereover thereof. Five years later the National Park Service Act passed, its intent to “conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein” (Kilgore, 2007), the word objects especially pertinent given it alludes to ‘things’, not ‘processes’, therein a psychology, and resultant worldview that embraces states of stasis over they of change. Thereon, and until the passing of the Wilderness Act in 1964, the National Park Service was the sole federal bureau mandated to preserve “natural conditions on public lands” (Sellars, 1997). Hence, under the premise of their ‘protection’, over 20m acres of U.S. forests have, ultimately, become beholden to the passing political whims of whomsoever takes the office of President.

Not until the arrival of the Yellowstone National Park 1988 fires would a fire season of such political, therein legislative, budgetary, administrative, and management significance as that of 1910 take hold. Therein, one and the same ecological site is central to both the birth and the slow, but no less apparent death of the U.S. wildfire policies of the 20th century. However, in the interim a not insubstantially sized collective of individuals and institutions recognised the shortcomings of the fire suppression strategy, of which several were Californians, such as Sequoia National Park superintendent John. R. White, who in the 1920s advocated wildfire, and that which latterly became known as ‘controlled burns’ by means of maintaining the historical fire regimes as were native to the biome and to the culture of the indigenous peoples thereof (Kilgore, 2007). Further proponents of wildfire’s role in regional ecologies including academics, such a H. H. Chapman who asserted in 1912 that if fire was eradicated from pine forests it might result in their “complete destruction” (Chapman, 1912).

Further notable figures that fought not fire, but the ideology of its suppression included ecologist, forester, and philosopher Aldo Leopold, who died [during a wildfire], as he lived, amidst the complex ecological systems about which he extensively wrote; chief of the inaugural park service’s Wildlife Division, George Wright, whose pioneering report ‘Fauna: No.1’ (Wright et al, 1933) recognised fire as integral to maintaining the integrity of the floral and faunal assemblages that had evolved in its presence in national parks of the U.S.; fire ecologist Ed Komarek yet further illuminated the interplay between fire, flora and fauna in wide-ranging fire- prone landscapes of the U.S. and beyond; and Harold Biswell, who started his career thinking fire to be destructive to forests, but who together with Harold Weaver led landmark research that established fire fundamental to the ecologies of California. Theirs was a mind-set aligned to the, then fast-emerging, field of systems theory, for they perceived not of objects, but of processes, therein evaluated ecosystem health within and of appropriately broad spatiotemporal dimensions, as did the foremost significant ecologists of the era, including Arthur Tansley, and they as were seminal in establishing the lasting effects of human action on the environment, such as the archaeologist Grahame Clark [20]. Aldo, Wright, Komarek & co., are among the founding fathers of fire ecology as extends beyond the indigenous cultures of regions to which wildfire is native. Collectively, they and their fire-advocating peers evidenced that no matter the prominence of the ecological theorist F.E. Clements during the first four decades of the 20th century, his central hypothesis, which posited ecosystems to be in autogenic succession towards climax states in which species, and particular assemblages thereof, reproduce “ad infinitum” (Wright and Heinselman, 1973, p.4) within “the presence of stable climate” (Agee, 2000, p.7).

The paradigmatic seeds sewn in the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s finally sprouted in the early 1960s, when Stewart Undall, U.S. Secretary of the Interior instructed the National Academy of Sciences to review the research requirements of the national parks, simultaneously asking Aldo Leopold’s son, A. Starker Leopold, to lead the nation’s foremost respected wildlife experts to interrogate the park’s policies and practices. Published in 1963, the reports signalled the end of attempts to exterminate wildfire whereupon its presence posed no threat to human life and property, while shattering the illusion that ‘nature’ constitutes landscapes in stasis, and all as rests thereupon. By 1967 the recommendations of the Leopold Report had facilitated a wholesale revision of Natural Resource Policy guidelines, and in turn, fire policy (National Park Service, 1968), and by 1968 ‘wild’ was finally reunited with ‘fire’ in the form of the first lightening-ignited inferno to “purposefully” escape attempts at fire suppression [21] , an approach as would later be dubbed “let-burn”, thereon “prescribed natural fire”, and finally “wildland fire use” (Kilgore, 2007, p.104).

However, as the 20th century drew to a close, that, ultimately, neither fire ecology, nor science more generally determine wildland policymaking decisions would, yet again, become starkly apparent. No matter the fast-growing sum of the research as evidenced fire to be fundamental to the functioning of the ecological systems of several U.S. regions, whereupon wildfires as were within and of the historical range swept through Yellowstone National Park in the summer of 1988 the event thereof was met by fire suppression: not a single prescribed natural fire was permitted within the park the following year (Ibid), nor until such time as scientifically unnecessary, but in an election year, politically pertinent reviews (Christensen et al, 1989; Philpot et al, 1989) had taken place. Both reports found the premise of prescribed natural fire to be sound, advocating for the continuation of “an ecosystems approach” (Agee, 2000, p.9), as appropriate to the landscape and geographic context, and further research as interrogates the functioning thereof. However, the national review found the prescription criteria to be insufficient, and particularly so in national parks (Ibid).

Several years later, in response to a fire season that while modest compared to that of 1988 resulted in the loss of the lives of 35 wildland firefighters, President Clinton instigated another wildfire policy review. The resulting document, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program Review (USDI and USDA, 1995) aspired to provision of “clear, cohesive direction in fire management to the relevant federal agencies by establishing guiding principles for all fire-management agencies” (Jensen and McPherson, 2008, p.122). Unlike its predecessors the review recognised there to be variance in wildfire’s behaviour, therein the need for not one, but many approaches to living with fire. In 2001, the review was reviewed (USDI et al, 2001), the results echoing they of Philpot et al’s findings of a dozen years previously, that being the problem resides not with the science of fire ecology, nor, fundamentally, with the policy as relates thereto, but with the implementation thereof. Notably, the 2001 review asserted wildfire a contributory factor to ecosystem sustainability. While the review was in part born of the ambition to “make fire protection economically viable” (Ibid) at a time of fast-rising firefighting costs, the presidential administration nonetheless increased the fiscal budget from $1.6b in 2000 to $2.2b in 2001 (Ibid), the pattern thereof sustaining beyond the term of Clinton’s presidency, as is discussed at length in later chapters.

As Clinton’s successor, President George, W. Bush observed, the cost of implementing fire suppression policies ever rising, the expense thereof exceeding the market value of the properties and infrastructures it seeks to protect, it would “be cheaper to let the fires burn” (Ibid). However, as evidenced by the body of ecological findings as will be discussed later in this thesis, the expense is not merely economic, but environmental and social, and to such extent as now threatens not merely they as reside within fire-prone regions, nor nations, nor even continents, but ecosystems and societies worldwide. In the interim between Clinton’s presidency and now, further policies as advocate for fire resuming its place within ecosystems that evolved therewith have ensued, including the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003, and the Federal Land Assistance Management and Enhancement Act of 2009. Collectively these acts constitute a seismic shift away from fighting fire to living with it, or more specifically, to adapting workings of human systems to they of the Earth systems upon which their continued existence is dependant, therein of upholding the Leopold Report’s recommendations that, policies need ensure that ‘naturalness’, as alludes to ecosystem functioning, need prevail above all else (Leopold et al, 1963).

A virtue of the wildland policy structure of the U.S. is that of its emphasis of the need for “a collaborative, community-based approach to fire management” (Toman et al, 2013). A vice is that it continues to support means, mechanical and otherwise, that reduce biomass fuels in wildlands despite the fact that the act thereof is largely ineffective in biomes where vegetative regrowth is rapid, of which a consequence is not merely money, quite literally, going up in smoke, but unnecessary damage incurred to ecosystems by crews and their equipment, such for example as spreading invasive species, and eroding and contaminating soils (Keeley et al, 2014; Jensen and McPherson, 2008).

The ecological debate that raged a century or so ago now all but settled within the sciences as are directly concerned therewith, but for development at the peripheries of wildlands – the wildland urban interface – humanity would, perhaps, have desisted in its efforts to fight wildfire some decades ago. However, both at the interface of wildlands, and far therefrom, human systems are now intimately entwined with that which predates them: with fire. As will be discussed in detail in coming chapters, systemic shifts incur lateral reconfigurations, wherein one thing invariably leads to myriad others [Fig. 6]. The statement thereof applies to wildland fire policies, of which the historic legacy [fire suppression] has encouraged inherently unsustainable architectures to be built, and built en masse, in some of the world’s foremost and, in some instances increasingly, fire-prone regions. Yet, regardless of the immense economic (Calkin et al, 2011), and ecological expense as results therefrom, the matter is all but unaccounted for in real estate development costs.

In the words of a headline from the High County News, “We need a better social contract with wildfire”, as “neither side [the fossil-fuel lobby and politicians of whom the policies align thereto, and environmentalists] is doing much to create lasting solutions on the ground” (2017, online), the message thereof mirroring that of the findings of several recent studies, such as a National Science Foundation report (2009) that asserted there to be an imperative for interdisciplinary research focused on gaining greater understanding of complex environmental systems by means of enabling better policy outcomes, and legacies therefrom. However, as discussed above, policy alone defines not environmental and social outcomes. Thus, “there is a need to codify and draw crosscutting lessons from the body of wildfire social science identifying the variable incentives, codes, or regulations” that might enable adaption to living in fire-prone environments (Smith et al, 2016, p.15).

2.13 Spatiotemporally Adaptive Architectures

“There was a time when the world of knowledge and the world of dreams were not separated: when the artist and the scientist, for all practical purposes, saw the “outside world” through the same kind of spectacles” Mumford, 1922.

In an era of which the predominant architectural form that becomes built has become all but stripped of symbolism, be that symbolism sacred or otherwise, the remnants of architecture’s ancient pyrotechnical past now largely reside in museums, publications, and artworks, with an all too rare exception thereto Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Blazing Wing, which poignantly expressed architecture as “alchemical transmutation” (Spiller, 2006, p.141). As will be discussed in detail in Chapter 5, Reyner Banham perceived of architecture as either combusting carbon-based material [wood] or conserving it [i.e. Hearth or Home] (1984). However, though speaking to ‘tribal’ communities, strictly speaking, his words, like they of Levis-Strauss in The Raw and The Cooked, conveyed an inherently Western perspective, for indigenous architectures, such as they of Native Americans, converge combustion and construction to create architectures aligned to the seasonality and stochasticity of their surroundings.

But, that while speaking of an inherently ephemeral phenomenon – fire - Banham nonetheless acknowledged not the potentialities of the architectural equivalent of a ‘Unity of Opposites’ is unsurprisingly, given that most late 19th and early 20th century Western architecture schools revolved around notions of permanency. Indeed, so very ingrained was the idea that structures should be built to indefinitely-last that even those that looked to the ‘natural world’ for inspiration designed buildings and cities which come spring, summer, autumn or winter, or any natural hazard event, were intended to stand in states of architectural stasis. The statement thereof is expressed in the works of, amongst others, Ebenezer Howard (2010), Le Corbusier (1987), Frank Lloyd Wright (1958), and Buckminster Fuller (2013), though the latter did recognise the dynamism within Earth systems and the imperative to align architectures thereto.

As the 20th century advanced, both within many Western architectural and planning studios, and society more generally, understanding of the workings of non-human systems grew. Thus, one by one, functional traits inspired by they of flora, fauna, and/or assemblages thereof, such as connectivity (Otto, 2010), networked intelligence (Pask, 1969; Negroponte, 1970, 1975), migration (Archigram, 1999; Small, 1977, 2013), seasonality (Sorkin, 1998), cyclicality (Price 1996; Woods, 2001, 2004), and evolution (Frazer, 1995) propagated across experimental practices. As one century passed and another arrived, a new generation of architectural and planning researchers and practitioners took the systemic baton forward, and in the process expanded both understanding and applications in architectural complexity, be it modelled on ecological and/or environmental elements, and/or integrating facets thereof, be those facets living or non-living (Hensel et al, 2004, 2010; Shane, 2005; Reiser and Umemoto, 2006; Cruz, and Pike, 2008; Gissen, 2010; Sheil, 2012; Hensel, 2013; Weinstock, 2013; Cairns and Jacobs, 2014; Brownell and Swackhamer, 2015).

The above-cited works, together with those discussed in following chapters, have been foundational in establishing the potentialities for the development of the Panarchistic architectural paradigm. For example, helping to inform how structures and the infrastructure systems to which they are connected may embed the biochemistries and behaviours as are found in ecological and other non-human systems. Collectively, these and other developments evidence that not merely in science fiction films – in the likes of Avatar – could human and non-human systems integrate seamlessly, but within the near built environment future.

2.14 Summary

“Our choices in the future will not only be informed by what is possible (the science), but will involve more and more philosophical, moral and creative decisions based on what kind of civilization we want to live in. To make informed decisions here, we must bring to bear our historical knowledge, as well as a wider arts and humanities understanding to be able to inform our discussions.” Prof. Michael Scott, 2018, personal communication.

As advocated by several leading wildfire scientists, including Stephen Pyne, Max Moritz, and David Bowman, the literature review that informs this thesis extrapolated and analysed data from both historic and leading-edge publications from the sciences, humanities, arts, and design to deliver a truly transdisciplinary perspective on a complex socio-ecological issue, that being humanity’s possible future relationship with wildfire at the wildland urban interface. The scientific, technological, and design reviews largely discussed in the forthcoming chapters, in this chapter issues fundamental to the theoretical and practice framework within which this work resides were discussed, with conclusions therefrom summarised as follows.

The original modus of scientific and philosophical enquiry, transdisciplinary research has a long and distinguished history of illuminating discoveries, ideas, innovations, and inventions that are inaccessible when working within not beyond disciplinary boundaries. But, while consistently employed by many notable scientists, philosophers, designers, and architects from pre-Classical to contemporary times, in the post-Newtonian age, its prevalence declined, as enquiries, scientific and otherwise, tended become more specialised, the paradoxical price thereof being the greater our grasp of the details of scientific and philosophical matters, at times, the lesser our grasp of the big ‘systems’ picture, and not least as relates to wildfires. However, as the research community confronts both locally and globally connected issues of which the causations and effects ricochet from one region to the next, one system to the next, and one peoples to the next, transdisciplinarity and variations thereof, including ‘antidisciplinarity’, are beginning to come full-circle. Hence, it’s not just ‘things’ that are being ‘recycled’, but methods, approaches, and ideas more generally.

Though the term ‘resilience’ has manifold interpretations, within socio-ecological systems thinking it relates to the elasticity of an ecosystem’s response to disruption, be that disruption of ‘natural’, ‘human-made’, or hybridised causation. Of its various theoretical strands, that of foremost relevance to this thesis is Holling, Gunderson and peers’ construct of Panarchy, which a product of interrogations into ecological system dynamics and trajectories, provides of an organising structure through which socio-ecological disruption of a cyclic nature, and the legacies thereof, can be understood throughout space and time (2002). Conceptually, one may conceive of Panarchy as a set of ‘rules’, which if transferred to the built environment would become its codes. Visually, the construct of Panarchy is elegantly conveyed in Holling’s ‘The Adaptive Cycle’ (1986), which expresses the relations between an ecosystem’s various states, and in the process acknowledges that disruption is fundamental to enabling renewal in some ecosystem-types. As are all scientific and philosophical fields, Panarchy is a field-in-progress, hence, over-time, its hypotheses have been subject to revisions. The version of Panarchy as relevant to this thesis perceives of ‘Nature Evolving’, which construes of ecological systems as evolutionary and adaptive (Hollings et al 2002).

Concerned not with the creation of ‘objects’, but of ‘processes’, be they natural, human-made, or hybrids comprised both, imperative was the need to establish the processes that drive the destruction and renewal dynamics within the WUI of past, present, and possible future. Ecological, wider Earth, and human systems being intimately integrated, not discreet entities, any paradigmatic proposal drawn from the examination of not all, but one system, may render it fit for theoretical, but not practical enquiry. This thesis concerned with finding solutions to, what for many, is an all-too-real and urgent challenge that places their lives, properties, and livelihoods at risk, investigation of key socio-cultural-political issues was imperative. Both within, and beyond the case study region, psychology, cognitive behaviour, philosophy, and the values, beliefs, and rituals, both religious and secular, as stem therefrom, have significant bearing on how and why individuals perceive of wildfire, and fire more generally. The extent of the variances in human perception of wildfire becomes apparent whereupon one compares and contrasts the fire myths, modern and ancient, by which societies live. Fire myths reveal how their authors and audiences relate to fire, and to the environment at large. Upon cross-analysis of Origin of Fire mythologies with wildfire science data, including the fire persistence traits of pyrophytes indigenous to both the Mediterranean and temperate-type climates, and the fundamental dynamics of the fire-regimes they form, such are the correlations therebetween as to suggest that both ancient and indigenous peoples had/have systemic understanding of their environment, and of wildfires’ relation thereto. The matter thereof supports further interrogation of fire and other environment-related myths as data sources of possible relevance to fundamentally-scientific enquiries of the nature of that undertaken by Bowman et al in 2015, while partially, if not wholly discrediting the idea that ancient and indigenous peoples were/are ‘savage’ and ‘primitive’. The political implications thereof are significant in the context of wildfire research, for as discussed earlier and in forthcoming chapters, both in the wildland urban interface and beyond, Native Americans and their fire cultures and practices have, and continue to be, systemically subjected to imperialist attitudes and actions, the latter of which are facilitated through government policies and the codes as manifest therefrom. However, having populated regions to which fire is native since prehistoric times, they are peoples of whom the beliefs and thus practices, architectural and otherwise, have coevolved therewith. Whereupon the WUI canvas is to be wiped clean of an ostensibly invasive architectural paradigm, such that a reconciliation of human and non-human systems can occur, architects, planners, and policymakers will need understand, respect, and value the foremost tenants of Native American fire culture.

A profound irony of efforts to entirely eradicate fire from the architectural and urban design WUI and wider narrative is the fact that fire was, at a long distant time, integral to not merely buildings, but to cities, and their planning. In examining the relations, both theoretical and technical, between fire and building of past, we gain insight into potentialities future. The proposal thereof infers not that we replicate architectures of old, but that we examine how these architectures tackled issues of environment, thereon extrapolate therefrom that which has present and possible future relevance, and, having integrated all such insights, innovations, and inventions as have evolved in the interim between the concepts’ points of architectural origin and now, may improve upon the original solutions: an approach that if using the terminology of genetic-engineering would involve ‘splicing’ old ideas with new technologies. But, it’s not merely the myths that we tell that expresses how we think, it’s the way that we tell those myths. Just as Western modes of thinking have shaped the global built environment narrative, so too has the way we convey the tenets of that thinking: our communications. Be they visual, auditory, or other, both at the technical and conceptual level, communications are in constant evolution. In expanding our understanding of communications modus from the present to the past, and across cultures and civilisations, we gain a sense of how different peoples have and do perceive and thereon mentally process external events. While of general relevance to tasks that are concerned with researching future scenarios and the risks and opportunities affiliated therewith, the subject has particular pertinence to issues at the interface of human and non-human systems. Whereas, art aside, contemporary Western communications modes tend present information linearly, vice versa is true of both ancient and indigenous cultures, with evidence thereof as diverse as the structuring of the Kayapo origin of fire myths and their visual and auditory enactments, to the structuring of proto-writing, including cuneiform, to both the ancient and contemporaneous writing systems of the East, including China. However, for reasons including, but not limited to the dynamism inherent in geopolitics, globalisation and other routes through which ideas, paradigmatic and otherwise, travel, and innovation and invention in both communications apparatus and the infrastructure that supports it, status communications quos are, relatively speaking, ephemeral. None have yet answered how an architectural system that sits astride both the wild and the urban, and in regions populated by both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples, would accommodate for the variances in how different species and different cultures communicate. Though beyond the scope of this thesis to answer this question in its entirety, the matter of how information may be migrated between these parties will be discussed in later chapters, for be it conceptual or technical, a reconciliation can only occur whereupon those to be reconciled can ‘hear’ and ‘speak’ to one another. Bringing context to the significance thereof, as discussed in detail later, lives and properties have been lost due to fundamental failures in WUI wildfire warning communications systems.

The ‘architecture of architecture’ they may be, but the building codes of present are not so different from the building codes of Bronze Age Mesopotamia, in that, now as then, be it in Global North or Global South nations, building codes determine what can and cannot be built, why, and in the process, like myths, illuminate how their authors and enactors perceive/ed of the problems they seek to solve. Likewise, both ancient and contemporary building codes are largely consumed with the concept of relative architectural and urban permanence, which, as will be discussed later, is the antithesis of the paradigmatic principle that underpins indigenous architectural solutions to living in wildfire-prone territories and their various fire regimes. But, as highlighted by Maranghides et al, within the case study region, WUI fire construction codes and the research and practice upon which they are built are, technically speaking, in their ‘infancy’ (2015). Yet another ‘industry-scale’ knowledge gap, not one, but several dozen theses would be required to address the issue. However, the question of how WUI building codes may legislate for leading-edge and emerging technologies of multiple variants will be addressed in later chapters.

Having examined issues fundamental to humanity’s relationship with wildfire at, and beyond the wildland urban interface, the most contentious of all was discussed: policy. Their purpose and intent that of ‘protecting’ people and environment, within the case study region, the extent to which wildfire and WUI policies have helped not hindered their inhabitants, both human and non-human, has been highly variable. Historically, ignorance of the fire regimes and their spatiotemporal cyclicality was a primary factor therein. However, political and otherwise, vested interests have played a constant role in undermining the process of policy research and development, thus, while scientific understanding of wildfires and the risks and opportunities they present has grown, to date, exponentially, this is only partially reflected in current wildfire and WUI policies and their affiliated legislature. The issue thereof has bearing both within and beyond the case study region, and in nations as diverse as Brazil, Australia, Canada and China.

But, if we are to change wildland urban interface building policy and codes, and propose a paradigm anew, what is that paradigm? Which brings us to architecture, urban design, and the material and the information systems fundamental thereto. Whereas, as will be discussed in detail in the chapters that follow, fire is integral to the material and information systems that underpin the lifecycles of flora and fauna indigenous to fire-prone regions, and the trait thereof is mirrored in both ancient and contemporaneous indigenous vernacular architectures, vice versa western WUI architectural and urban design approaches. Nonetheless, many are the signs that a new architectural age is, and has for some decades, been dawning, as researchers and practitioners from myriad disciplinary fields, many of them increasingly overlapping, examine how living organisms and systems solve both material and information problems, including resource shortages, climate change, biodiversity loss, and more. While wildfire is not a common topic of discussion within the domain of experimental architecture and urban design, many concepts in development in these fields more generally are potentially transferable. Thus, in the chapters that follow, this thesis builds on the wider body of research and practice at the edge of human and non- human systems.

Echoing the words of a well-known theoretical physicist, the nature of the risks and the opportunities wildfires present in the wildland urban interface is such that, the former will be not addressed if we apply the ‘same thinking’ that created them. Equally, if we are to identify, let alone harness the potentialities as may be inherent in the phenomena of wildfire, we need think differently. Thankfully, as discussed above, many are the fire cultures from which we can draw insights, inspiration, and ideas, if only we have means to ‘see’ those cultures. Having discussed the methods by which the findings, conclusions, and outputs of this thesis were generated, some ways of ‘seeing’, sensu John Berger, scientific, philosophical, and psychological will be examined.

Footnotes

[7] Tack is sailing term used to describe a manoeuvre that turns the bow toward the wind, therein changes a vessel’s course.

[8] In reference to Da Vinci’s Ideal City, which is documented in sheet 36, 39, and 47 of his manuscripts (www.museoscienza.org).

[9] The most accomplished cryptographer in 15th century Europe, Alberti harnessed Arabic knowledge of frequency analysis to pioneer supercipherment in the form of the cipher disc, which described in his De Cifris treatise of 1467 enables cryptographers to decrypt polyalphabetic ciphers in multiple languages.

[10] Popular in classical Greece, pyxides were vessels used for the storage of personal items, such as cosmetics and jewellery, and it is to a pyxis, not a ‘box’ that classical Grecian poets and playwrights referred in mythological accounts of Pandora.

[11] One of the oldest extant Indo-European texts, the Rigveda is a collection of over 1000 Vedic Sanskrit hymns dedicated to the Rigvedic deities including Indra and Agni.

[12] Zoolatry refers to the ritualistic worship of animals in the belief that they incarnate of deities and other supernatural forces.

[13] Therianthropic refers a mythological human-animal hybrid.

[14] Integral to Egyptian creation myths, the sacred Bennu bird, as descried in some pyramidal texts as “He who came into being by himself” (Hart, 2005), was symbolic of rebirth and periodic self-renewal.

[15] The foundation of filmmaker and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence James Cameron.

[16] His works foundational in the development of the field of hermeneutics, transdisciplinary researcher Schleiermacher drew on insights from disciplines as diverse as philosophy, psychology, politics, pedagogy, aesthetics, ethics, dialectics and more in an effort to evolve Kant’s theory of there being subjectivity interpretation of external phenomena, described in his own words as, “the art of understanding” (Schleiemacher, 1978).

[17] Within the belief system of the Ge peoples, and of the wider indigenous community of South America, the jaguar is sacred. Mirroring those of, amongst other Indo-European fire-related deities, Athena, the jaguar’s mythological attributes include strength, power, wisdom, and strategic skill in warfare. More significantly still, in some Amazonian tribal communities, the jaguar in its dietic form is revered as the god of terrestrial fire, with rituals of worship in honour thereof involving various artefacts representative of fire-captured [i.e. torches].

[18] The Amazon basin’s apex predator, to this day, Jaguar (Panthera onca) pose a lethal threat to Kayapo and other Amazonian peoples (Neto et al, 2011).

[19] In reference to user-privacy breeches on the part of social media companies, such as Facebook, and the implications to Western democracy.

[20] In reference to Clarke’s research mapping how Neolithic settlements impacted upon regional landscapes [i.e. slash and burn forest clearance in agropastoral societies]

[21] In reference to the Kennedy Ridge Fire, Sequoia-Kings Canyon.

Continue to Method here.

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.