9.8 No Panacea

If the theories of Jung, Toffler, Postrel and others hold true, tomorrow, as today, and all past recorded days, humanity will remain indefinitely embroiled in debate over the nature of the world and its workings, including they of wildfire, and all related issues [6.3.4; 6.4.2]. Compounding the conflict, communications, be they streamed to televisions, laptops, tablets, or mobiles, or some new, as yet to be invented device, will circulate a mix of facts and fictions parading as facts, some of explicit intent to undermine science and the logic by which science deciphers truth from untruth, and often, but not always, for vested reasons [2.4; 6.3.4; 6.3.5]. Consequently, the proposition of Panarchistic architecture is put forth in understanding that the problems it seeks to solve are denied by some and mis-understood by others, which, together with the ‘unknown, unknowns’, such for example as whether Earth’s climate and its wildfire regimes and other systems will manifest best-case, median-case, or worse- case scenarios [144], renders it impossible to accurately predict its possible uptake both within and beyond academia and wider research and practice [Fig. 93]. The position thereof reflects the foremost scientific theories as have influenced this thesis, including that of Resilience Theory and Panarchy, both of which posit there to be limits to the extent to which humanity can control its environment, thus future.

>Continue to Chapter 9.9 here.

Footnotes

[144] Worst-case being defined as a climatic shift so extreme as to push the average mean global temperature to a par with that of the Mid-Pliocene Warm Period to the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (McGuire, 2013).

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.