6.5 Summary: Principles of Pyrorelativity: A tri-part paradigm in précis

“All things change to fire, and fire exhausted falls back into things.” Heraclitus, 2001.

As a new age of discovery dawns, ideas so ancient as to pre-date the written word are rising from their cosmological ashes. Supported by state-of-the-art scientific findings, and necessitated by climate, ecology, and fire regime shifts on a planetary-scale, these ideas seek to re-align human systems within Earth’s operating parameters. Stepping beyond disciplinary boundaries and the intellectual blinkers they tend create, these ideas, and the methodological approach their exploration necessitates, illuminate how indigenous architectures in fire-prone regions accommodate for the frequencies, intensities, and severities of historical fire regimes. Whereas, the dominant architectural narratives of the WUI of the western U.S., constitute an invasive species that while propagating wildfire, paradoxically perpetuate policies and practices that seek to extinguish it, thus by default to hinder not help sustain the integrity of local, regional, and global abiotic and biotic systems.

But, as awareness of the synergism within natural systems grows, and especially as relates to the role of wildfire in sustaining not merely species, nor assemblages thereof, but regional hydrological and geological integrity, and all as relies thereupon, the imperative to review architectural and urban design thinking, practice, policy, and the codes created therefrom becomes increasingly apparent. Within the worlds of industry and commerce change often comes from without not within, and it may be that the same becomes true of architecture. For example, as wildfire frequencies, intensities, and thus severities take an increasingly large economic toll, structures built to present WUI specifications may become uninsurable, while simultaneously land-availability, thus prices are rising. Ultimately, architects, planners, and policymakers drive not markets. People and their immediate and near-future needs do.

Having drawn on the insights from both the case studies and the wider body of research across which this study extends, this thesis proposes a tri-part architectural paradigm, which like the original ‘ur-ban’ revolution is principally a consequence of environmental change at the local, regional, and global scale. Born of the study of the functional traits of some of the foremost persistent plant genera on Earth, the environmental parameters of the paradigm extend beyond the present and to the possibility that the climate is transitioning towards MSTs as extreme as those of the Paleocene-Ecoene Thermal Maximum, therein to fire regimes sizeably more ‘ferocious’ than they within ‘living memory’.

Rejecting the notion that it will be possible to avoid real estate development in wildlands, with contributory factors including mass migration of peoples due to sea level rises and resource driven conflicts, it’s proposed that architects, planners and policymakers work not to best-case, but worst-case WUI scenarios, thus increasingly more, not less real estate and other development situated in fire-prone regions of the western United States, and beyond. Should this scenario come to pass, both present and historical precedent suggest it highly improbable that decision-makers at the national, regional, and local scale will agree on the strategies as need be developed and deployed. Thus, abiotic, biotic and human factors could converge to create highly heterogeneous WUI landscapes, some of which will, as today, be populated by architectures and other infrastructure that align not to the workings of wildfire, thus exasperate existing problems, such for example as water scarcity.

Sensu Bowman, humanity has both cause and capacity to enter a new “pyric phase” (2011) in which wildfire is bestowed the reverence it once was, wherein its gifts, as well as its price, are acknowledged, but, expressed not via acts of worship, but of WUI practice and policy. A pan-archaic approach, which though developed through rigorous scientific interrogation, echoes philosophical teachings in mythologies Grecian, Vedic, and more, the paradigm and its associated theoretical constructs, including PANdorian theory, and The Circle of Variability, speaks to an “old new world”, in which, sensu Newley an Bricusse’s musical standard, ‘Feelin’ Good’, the cyclicality of circumstances entangles past with present. For example, used to settlement we, most of us, have become during the Holocene. However, planetary- scale transitions may necessitate a return to a nomadism of sorts, thus temporary not permanent architectures and the material values affiliated therewith. Put succinctly, that we are “living in a material world” (Brown and Rans, 1984) may be subject to reassessment. Upon synthesising the transdisciplinary strands of this study, the principles for a new architectural and urban design paradigm aligned to the fire regimes of the western U.S. may be summarised as below, and as compared to the existing and historic paradigm in the table [Tab. 7] over page:

Metaphorical Context:

• ‘Eternal Flame’ - Pyric cycle as facilitator of biological evolution, therein survival of not species, but of genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom.

• ‘Phoenix’ - Life as a prerequisite for death. Death as a prerequisite for life, ad infinitum, thus landscapes in states of transition, not conservation.

• ‘Tree of Life’ - Systems of abiotic and biotic systems: nature as not a part of its sum, but the sum of its many living and non-living parts.

Design Thinking, Practice and Policy Brief:

• Architecture as a cyclic biochemical process of material & information exchange.

• Creative destruction as architectural and urban design brief.

• Architectural genera of 3 variants: pyro-endurers, pyro-evaders, & pyro-resistors.

• Variants replicate, reproduce, or resist upon the passing of wildfire.

• Pyro-endurers exhibit resprouting, pyriscence, pyrogermination, & abscission.

• Pyro-evaders exhibit pyriscence, & pyrogermination.

• Pyro-resistors exhibit retardance, abscission, pyriscence, & pyrogermination.

• Evolutionary architecture, forms new species & assemblages in space and time.

• Cradle to not product cradle, nor building cradle, but landscape cradle.

• Ashes to Architectural Ashes: upon destruction nourish not pollute landscapes.

• Architectural DNA [i.e. codes] distributed at multiple spatiotemporal scales.

• Environmental sensing, actuating, & analysis informing architectural transitions.