Shrine20231214 6609 Vowpdx | Resilient Architecture in the Age of Climate Change

Resilient Architecture in the Age of Climate Change

By: David Guillen

Skyscrapers, apartments, airports, factories, bridges. Every day, our world is becoming increasingly populated with these concrete fascinations. But as we familiarize ourselves with these structures, we become increasingly isolated and violent with our connection to architecture. In a paradoxical sense, we have disconnected ourselves from our man-made creations, leading to a lack of care, attention, and consideration for these creatures. We now see this reflected in humanity’s struggle against climate change, where architecture seemingly has no purpose to reconnect with humanity or other symbiotic creatures and, instead, is defined by violent displacement, deforestation, and destruction of local ecosystems. How do we solve and heal our connection with architecture in the face of such uncertainty? My artistic project, by discussing contemporary methods of political violence against architecture and humanity’s disconnect from architecture, seeks to use these arguments and contrast them with solutions that seek to humanize architecture and heal our connection with it, as well as provide solutions that incorporate themes of resilience and symbiosis, giving humanity a deeper and richer interconnectedness with these concrete fascinations that will serve us in the fight against climate change.

“It was a struggle against an airport, against the world that needs such airports, against the state and the state’s ability to decide how our lives and the places we live are structured, and it was a struggle for community self-determination” (Gelderloos 2022, 94). Those were the words of a French resident from Nantes, who, along with several other community members, blocked the construction of an airport seeking to destroy the area's wetlands, forests, and farmland. This quote, along with several others from the book, “The Solutions are Already Here,” by Peter Gelderloos, is just one of the several manifestos created by individuals and groups that seek to use political power, mainly in the form of protest or violence, to tear down inherently oppressive structures such as airports and architectures that seek to serve capitalists and its endorsers. From a narrow view, there is nothing wrong with taking direct action against these elements of society. Many pieces of architecture, such as pipelines and factories, have contributed to the desecration and destruction of indigenous lands, which in turn have further contributed to the increase in CO2 emissions in the air, which is depriving our Earth of her health. But from a broader view, we must ask ourselves, “How did we get to this point?” Agnes Denes, creator of Wheatfield (1982) (fig.1), uses her artwork to explain our disconnect with architecture. By planting a literal wheatfield in the epicenter of architecture, New York City, Denes calls out society’s mismanagement and misplaced priorities. Why have we pursued creating multiple buildings with no functionality, especially no functionality, with regard to our natural environment? We have created a drab, gray, and dull environment that only seeks to empower economic efficiency rather than connecting with nature and considering her as a key player for our survival and as a way to create a symbiosis between human and non-human species. Growing up in New York City, this piece resonates most with me. You rarely find spots in the city that can give you a fresh breath of air from the crisp and soft breeze flowing from forests. Instead, you are inhaling pollution, debris, and drabness with a hint of capitalist undertones produced by the city’s financial powerhouse, Wall Street. Denes’s artwork seems like a cry for help; should we let nature reclaim her lost land through this wheatfield? Or can we use the brightness produced by this wheatfield to produce a more beautiful product that is aesthetically pleasing but vital and beneficial for both human and non-human species?

Humans want to choose the second option, but what are we willing to sacrifice? In the artwork Quarry (2015) (fig.2) by Amie Siegel, we are shown a small room full of marble tiles with a rather discomforting color palette of drab blue and gray. This artwork is meant to signal another element of architecture, extractivism. “The artist revealed the connection between the brutal process of extraction and the shiny showrooms that entice prospective clients by relying on the associations of marble with exclusivity and opulence in the speculative real estate economy” (Fowkes 2022, 11). Through this artwork, we are shown humanity’s reliance on extractivist practices that we use for rather meaningless purposes. We extract marble and plead for marble in the market for architecture. We see it as a costly signal, a sign of ostentatious wealth to boost our cultural capital in society. But, in the grand scheme of things, what is the purpose of hoarding these social signs and materials if it produces unnecessary costs for the rest of society? By demanding marble in our apartments, workplaces, and high-rise buildings, we endorse the continued extraction of marble, which not only affects our ecosystems and the climate (extractionist practices produce CO2 emissions and other greenhouse gases plaguing our atmosphere) but also affects the local communities who have to arbitrarily use their labor for this, affecting the livelihood of those workers and further alienating them from architecture. Architecture, extraction, and labor are interconnected and can affect multiple areas of society depending on how one of these elements is used. Now the question becomes, “What have others done with architecture for climate change, and what can we, imperfect and self-interested humans, learn from this?”

The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change provides multiple ways to examine climate change and art in general. Still, concerning architecture, some groups, such as the Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), are leading the charge with innovative ideas and designs that make our architecture worth living in. “BIG proposes not that we return to old vernacular styles, but that we make use of our new tools and our continuum of knowledge as we travel from one extreme climate to its opposite, that architecture is in a symbiotic relationship with its surrounds. The harsher the climate gets, the more intense its impact on the architecture” (Demos 2021, 280). Bjarke Ingels further demonstrates this in his artwork, Skuru Bridge (2011)(fig.3), where he talks about crafting a bridge between two forest banks that explore a new form of symbiosis between architecture and nature, benefitting humans on foot or in cars, as well as the local flora and fauna. The idea of creating symbiotic architecture resonates deeply with Jeremy Rifkin’s idea of “biophilia consciousness,” which, in my opinion, is best summarized with the following quote, “Where we experience others’ pain and suffering - and even joy - as if it were our own, the empathic impulse that emanates from deep inside our neurocircuitry is an emotional and cognitive recognition of the other person’s vulnerability and their struggle to flourish in their one and only life” (Rifkin 2022, 227). Through Ingels's artwork, Ingles captures the empathetic portion of biophilia consciousness best by combining empathetic architecture for both humans and non-humans, creating a biophilic symbiosis that highlights the power of eco-friendly architecture.

For some, however, mere mentions of eco-friendly architecture aren’t enough to help humanity understand the deeper connection between architecture and climate change. Enter “Climax Change!” by Pedro Gadanho. This book is full of rich ideas and concepts explaining how we can improve architecture. Still, one important theoretical concept the author discusses is “thinking like a mall” or “thinking like a building.” Rather than looking at architecture in isolation from us, we can see it as just another natural, man-made feature worth analyzing and incorporating into our large arsenal in the fight against climate change. “In this light, “thinking like a mall” means to accept that also objects and structures produced by humans have their own independent processes, which we not always anticipate and control … developing an empathy might engage us with the similarities that the life of that mall bears with natural processes” (Gadanho 2022, 101-102). In this sense, we start healing our relationship and connection with architecture. Rather than having a relationship plagued by violence and isolation, we humanize architecture to give us a deeper meaning and understanding of how it can fit in the overall environment. Island House in Laguna (2020)(fig.4) by Andres Jacques best demonstrates this by creating a blueprint that serves as an environmental mediator that collects and stores rainwater to counter high toxicity and salinity levels produced by nearby oil polluting oil industries, benefiting both humans and local flora and fauna. Therefore, we are inspired to build adapting, resilient architecture that fits both the needs of humans and the local ecosystem. Resiliency and adaptability are (conveniently enough) themes that Jeremy Rifkin also discusses in his book and something that is further seen in another piece of architecture, Astana International Financial Centre (2017)(fig.5), created by Adrian Smith and Gordon Gill, which combines these ideas with the incorporation of renewable energy sources powered by an energy grid that energizes local pavilions and retailers. Rifkin sees this as a defining and revolutionary piece of work in our current period, the Third Industrial Revolution. “It’s instructive to think of the TIR infrastructure as a cohort of smart, non-linear self organizing ecosystems that communicate, self-power, and manage their mobility” (Rifkin 2022, 175). However, architecture doesn’t have to be powered by the Internet of Things or other contemporary tools to make it resilient or adaptable. In “Building with Paper,” the authors explore a simple solution by using the most unconventional building material, paper, to demonstrate resilience and adaptability in uncertainty. Paper House (1995)(fig. 6) by Shigeru Ban demonstrates how we can use the topic of “pop-up” architecture to accommodate the needs of those displaced by climate change-induced events such as tsunamis, tycoons, etc.

With these ideas in mind, I hope that these ideas surrounding architecture and climate change can be applied to a broader scope of society and a component that contributes the most to climate change: cities. Though I am a city boy at heart, the truth is cities are responsible for a good percentage of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere, as pointed out by the author Walter De Gruyter of “Resilient City.” Additionally, our disconnect and lack of consideration for agricultural land has limited our availability of options for feeding and keeping cool/warm our citizens. However, with the abovementioned ideas, cities can be transformed to be more dynamic in the symbiotic and resilient sense.

Regarding my individual contribution to the overall project of creating a quilt, I have few skills in craft and drawing that I can demonstrate. Though my quilt lacks artistic maturity, my quilt demonstrates what all of these ideas discussed above can look like harmoniously. Architecture that is in tune, free-flowing, and bonding with its natural environment gives us a brighter and more vibrant earth for tomorrow. My quilt is just a small portion of what can be fixed in a broad array of topics and their connection to climate change, but I hope that the analysis and solutions presented above can serve as a simple way to enter these discussions and further dissect what else we can do to solve the climate crisis.

Works Cited

Demos, T. J., Emily Eliza Scott, and Subhankar Banerjee. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Art, Visual Culture, and Climate Change. London: Routledge, 2023.

Fowkes, Maja, and Reuben Fowkes. Art and Climate Change. New York: Thames & Hudson Inc., 2022.

Gadanho, Pedro. Climax Change!: How Architecture Must Transform in the Age of Ecological Emergency. New York: Actar, 2022.

Gelderloos, Peter. The Solutions are Already Here: Strategies for Ecological Revolution from Below. London: Pluto Press, 2022.

Gruyter, Walter de. Resilient City: Landscape Architecture for Climate Change. Mertens, 2022.

Knaack, Ulrich, Rebecca Bach, and Samuel Schabel. “Chapter 6: Case Studies.” Essay. In Building with Paper: Architecture and Construction. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser, 2023.

Rifkin, Jeremy. The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth. Swift Press, 2023.

Artworks