Case Studies Part III: PyroTriptych [Firescape Scenarios]

7.2 Overview

Having discussed how the low, mixed, and high-severity fire regimes of the western U.S. manifested in the Yellowstone National Park 1988, and the southern California October 2003, and 2007 fire complexes, and the impacts thereof upon the wildland urban interface and intermix in Case Studies: Parts I and II, Part III presents three future WUI scenarios, each of which is informed by the regional landscape histories in conjunction with climate, and wider Earth and human system trajectories. The following scenarios will both underpin the flash fictions to follow, together with the new WUI paradigm and building codes as evolve therefrom.

Western U.S. 2030:

Shrub, wood, and forestlands in varying states of ecological transition, though mixed, the regional fire regime picture is one of rising fire frequency, intensity, and severity. In California, factors including sustained drought and repeated bark beetle infestations render wide-ranging vegetation types perpetually fire-primed. Commonly yearlong fire seasons, higher than average 20th century temperatures, and increasingly low humidity levels, annually manifest several wildfire complexes that exceed human capacity to control. Though less frequent, wildfires in the Rockies now regularly spread at rates and intensities not witnessed since records began. Yet, conversion of wildlands to wildland urban interface continues apace, in part propagated by wide-scale inland movement of peoples away from coastal towns and cities. Integrating biological and electronic sensing, actuating, and analysis systems from below-ground to satellite level, hybrid environmental monitoring networks track nano to macro-scale changes in real-time across regions, nations, and continents. Enhanced by A.I., the networks and their manifold data outputs enable civic agencies to plan and implement detailed regional evacuations at speeds unimaginable a decade earlier. Insuring not things [i.e. buildings and their contents], but data [i.e. architectural plans and other design blueprints], insurers now work hand- in-glove with building supply chains, contractors, and tradespersons to assist their customers with rebuilding in the aftermath of wildfire, flooding, and other natural hazard events, wherein claims involve exchange not on monies, but of information.

7.2.1 Speculative Scenario 2030: Pyro-Evaders [Yellowstone National Park]

Beneath the ashes of architectures that were incinerated by an inferno of such intensity that it simultaneously combusted swathes of Lodgepole pine stands, and residential and commercial buildings alike, the seeds of material renewal have awoken. Having sensed the inferno’s timing, duration, intensity, and several other fire metrics, thereon sequenced and stored the data, ‘architectural seeds’ are configuring blueprints and other design specifications. Within days, the shoots of new buildings will rise from the forest floor. Like their biological equivalent, these self-organising architectures are endowed with means of monitoring both ground and surface conditions, thus able to adapt their materiality and wider physicality as they grow.

7.2.2 Speculative Scenario 2030: Pyro-Endurers [San Diego County]

Data pulsating between synthetic biological nodes, belowground sensing, processing, and storage networks are exchanging the metrics that were captured from the latest of several recent wildfires. Only marginally more severe than its immediate predecessors, while the passing of the wildfire has triggered architectural cloning processes, its variances are genetically recorded, as are any emerging patterns and trends that may have a bearing upon medium-to-long range material, structural, and other design, construction, and maintenance specifications. Thanks to their array of low-to-mixed fire severity defences, the majority of residential and commercial buildings, like the Californian Black oaks about them, are still standing, whereas they lost are in the process of being replaced with self-generating replicas.

7.2.3 Speculative Scenario 2030: Pyro-Resistors [San Diego County]

Though blackened, their furrowed bark-like exterior plating having dissipated the heat from a fast-moving wildfire, several structures stand tall atop still smouldering forest litter. Their flammable exterior parts self-pruned in the weeks prior to the onset of the wildfire season, their windows, doors, and other openings are still concealed behind smoke-activated fire-resistant coverings. Now a scene of serenity on the surface, structural plating systems are generating regrowth from within: By the arrival of the next wildfire season fresh ‘tissue’ will have resurfaced building exteriors, in much the same way as, over time, occurs in neighbouring Ponderosa pines.

>Continue to Chapter 7 [part III] 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.