5.1.8 Urban Forest Mosaics: Rossi, Rowe, Koetter et al meet Fire Ecology

“Walk under the canopy, and you’ll see a similar mosaic. In one spot, the ground is covered in charcoal limbs and carbonized fern fronds. Ten yards away, saplings, shrubs and ferns soak up the sun”. Eldridge, Soll, and Weil, 2018.

If, ‘noble’ or not, H.sapiens are to return to ‘the trees’, the biochemical composition thereof suggests it prudent to heed the lessons of the past, therein avoid “sanitized” visions of “utopia” (Rossi, 1984, p.3) and over-confidence in humanity’s capacity to control its surroundings. Architects, planners, and the built environment community more generally need understand the complexities of the “locus solus” (Ibidem, p.7): the uniqueness of a site socially and environmentally, and informatically and materially. In contrast, as discussed above, while many are they who are exploring concepts they describe as in some way, shape, or form to be ‘biologically’ and/or ‘ecologically’ useful and/or relevant, upon closer interrogation one finds many such ideas to be the architectural equivalent of swinging, all metaphorical corset, crinoline, and bonnet in a Fragonardian [114] garden, in that they speak only to idyllic notions of nature largely, if not wholly devoid of recognition of that which may undermine their fundamental premise and the proclamations built thereupon. In the words of Rossi’s contemporaries Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter, “some concept of nature will always be invented - discovered is the operative word – in order to appease the pangs of conscience” (Rowe and Koetter, 1984, p.8). They that aspire to tackling that which is born of complex challenges might do well to not merely ‘look’ before they leap, but look in the places that are presently over-looked.

As Aldo Rossi said, “with time, the city grows upon itself” (Rossi, 1984, p. 21), its ‘fabbrica’ [buildings] subject to “dynamic processes” that tend “more to evolution than preservation” (Ibidem, p.60), thus “the form of the city is always the form of a particular time of the city; but there are many times in the formation of the city” (Ibidem, p.61). Rossi’s research, led him to advocate “a truly scientific direction for architecture” (Ibidem, p. 176), but as did Rowe and Koetter, he recognised that science is not so much an architectural North Star as one of a constellation of stars that shape the city over time. Prescient words as relate thereto concluded the introduction to Rowe and Koetter’s theoretical treatise, “if this central creed of Futurism – let us celebrate force majeure – is unacceptable to the moral consciousness, then we are obliged to think again”, their antidote being “A proposal for constructive dis-illusion” which is both “an appeal for order and disorder, for the simple and the complex, for the joint existence of permanent reference and random happening” (Rowe and Koetter, 1984, p.8). Thus, while wildfire at the wildland urban interface was absent from their studies, the words of Rossi, Rowe, and Koetter resonate with the findings of the research programme upon which this thesis rests.

Although those who were seminal in futurism’s emergence, such as H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Alvin Toffler, were well-versed in wide-ranging scientific, arts, and humanities fields, thus able to view events through a variety of disciplinary lenses, as reflected in works as diverse as The War of Worlds (H. G. Wells, 1898), Future Shock (Toffler, 1970), and The Songs of Distant Earth (1986), such depth of insight and of imagination is largely absent from the resumes of many contemporary futurists, and in turn future-orientated organisations. However, those who trip beyond the ‘future fantastic’ to explore the urban tensions of possible near and far times produce works that speak to an appreciation of the methodologies that were advocated by the above, of which one example is the audio-visual performance ‘Hello City’ (Young, 2017), which, accompanied by an Orson Welles-esque narrative, wrestles with the possible implications of ubiquitously embedding technology into facets of urban life.

Philosophically, whereupon we follow in the multiplicitous [115] footsteps of the Husserl, Bergson, Deleuze, and Guattari, we partially offset our knowledge limitations and paradigmatic propensities, while simultaneously expanding our design brief, therein our creative scope and such potentialities as may emerge therefrom. Consequently, today as in decades past, not in the various outpourings of those with vested commercial interests do we find the most interesting interrogations of possible socio-ecological futures, urban and otherwise, but in fiction, of which a stand-out example is Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy, it being a work in which symbolism and surrealism effectively communicate the crux of the ethical dilemma embedded in such fields as genetic engineering and biodesign more broadly (VanderMeer, 2017). His works, like those of Wells, Orwell, Huxley and their influential early 20th Century co., thinly veil the developments of today, in an imaginary world of tomorrow, as are akin to modern-day fables of which the authors, having deciphered fiction from ‘fact’, and speculation from ‘data’, show greater depth of understanding of futures possible than some of whom it is the occupation to advise thereupon, and no less so than in the domain of the built environment.

Rossi, Rowe, and Koetter likewise recognised that the city of the future is entangled with that of the present and of the past: a triangulation of time and of the beliefs, values, and behaviours that transcend it. The antithesis of a tabula rasa, the trio spoke to urban mosaics that make manifest physically the metaphysical diversity of a metropolis. Theirs is not an “unadulterated natural setting” (Rowe and Koetter, 1984, p. 51) which “insisted on absolute detachment, symbolic and physical, from any aspects of existing context which has been, typically, envisaged as a contaminant” (Ibidem). Whereupon we apply their epistemological lens to future city visions as present nature devoid of its inherent properties, be it the combustibility of carbon- based materiality absent from wooden tower block proposals, or the labelling of species that are shape-shifting their territorial range by means of navigating climatic and other environmental changes as ‘invasive’, such concepts appear as distorted as the biological mutations of VanderMeer’s imagination [116].

Dualities, dichotomies, boundaries and binary oppositions are foremost themes of science fiction, mythology, and religion. Since, at the latest, the advent of writing, authors have questioned whether the relationship between order and disorder is ditheistic [rivalry and opposition] or bitheistic [harmonious]. The proto-religions of Mesopotamia and the Near-East, and Eastern religions, including Taoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, integrate both ditheistic and bitheistic constructs, such for example as the concept of creative destruction in which order and disorder work in symbiosis. In contrast, the religions of the West, and the largely secular society as spans the Global North align to a ditheistic interpretation. As discussed earlier the matter thereof is fundamental to societal interpretations of natural phenomena, and no less so than fire. In reality as in myth, humanity has, since time immemorial concerned itself with the question “What shall we do so as to prevent the future from not coming about?” (Rowe and Koetter, 1984, p. 99). As explored in the narratives of numerous science fiction novels and films, whereupon efforts to control an environment exceed a certain level and/or are built on false premise, they invariably fail.

In Rossi, Rowe and Koetter’s urban mosaics we find a parallel with the wildland, in that systemic resilience lies in diversity. In cities, as in forests, heterogeneity helps prevent against system-wide failures, creating the architectural and urban design equivalent of valves that halt the spread of threats. In the case of fire, just as some floral species are more flammable than others, so too are some architectural materialities and topographies. Likewise, in cities, as in forests, whereupon system agents, which in the case of the former are buildings and other structures, in the latter floral and faunal species, become over-reliant on a particular resource, the system becomes vulnerable to collapse, thus aligning to the principles of Holling’s Adaptive Renewal Cycle.

Reverting to one of Rossi’s points of reference, to Camillo Sitte, this thesis proposes three major “methods of city planning” (Rossi, 1984, p.35). However, whereas Sitte’s conclusion related only to the spatial distribution of a city’s material assets [adherence to a gridiron, radial, or triangular system], dealing not merely in space, but in time, methods need accommodate for the environmental processes with which the assets need coexist overtime, the foci here being fire. Put succinctly, a city as ascribes to one of three urban fire archetypes. Thus, the over-arching epistemological lens being the Adaptive Renewal Cycle, and its wider philosophical framework of Panarchy, this thesis proposes that in cities, which like London are comprised of architectural material and topographical mosaics, planning and policies accommodate for an urban equivalent of the mixed fire regime.

Therein, a secondary philosophical construct, Multiplicity, expanded to the built environment, such that multiple trajectories, each aligned to a fire regime of relative, but not absolute predictability, are embedded into architectural and urban design briefs. Cities of which the ‘fabbrica’ aligns to other material and topographical variants might adopt one of the tri-part wildland urban interface fire regimes and building codes as proposed in the Panarchic Codex, as detailed ahead.

>Continue to Chapter 5.1.9 here.

Footnotes

[114] In reference to Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s painting The Swing.

[115] In reference to the philosophical concept of Multiplicity, which asserts there to be more than one geo-historical trajectory.

[116] A reference to the first novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy, Annihilation.

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.