Disaster is a moment when the conveniences of a modern society are absent and man is left with only a right to survive. To sustain this life, architecture must respond through a question of where the boundaries between human need and human desire meet. Human beings require sustenance and covering, but in light of disaster relief and the responsibilities that architecture has to life, the bare essentials of food, water, and shelter are in fact, inadequate to ultimately sustain it.
To promote life is architecture. Vicente Guallart humors us by saying, “There would be no need for architecture if human beings were content to live in caves or in trees.” Nourishment and shelter are enough to sustain life immediately, but more is required to promote its growth. Although the essentials for recovery is ultimately different per scenario, the criteria to promote growth would be to maintain the morale and hopes of an affected community.
Social interaction addresses this necessity as it is vital for healing. Humans are social creatures and have a tendency to be in groups than to be alone. This undulating yearning for companionship exhibits the overlap of human need and human desire that calls for design that should encourage deep connections between disaster victims. If man were to lose his sense of hope for life, how can the hope for recovery exist?
Take into consideration Robert Zemeckis’ film “Cast Away,” where the main character Chuck Noland, who was stranded on an uninhabited island after surviving a traumatic plane crash, created his own companion out of a volleyball that washed ashore. Note that the creation of this character came along only after Noland had already secured his bare necessities of food, water, and shelter. Throughout the film, the volleyball that personified an imaginary friend created a pseudo-dialogue for Noland to address his loneliness. Often times Noland would express his concerns to the volleyball, only to somehow imply that this imaginary friend had the solutions to his problems. Noland eventually found rescue after four years of living in solitude.
Even to gauge real life circumstance, the earthquake in Haiti last January also exemplifies how humans turn to social interaction as a necessity to recover from a disaster. Just two weeks after the innumerable amount of news coverage on the extent of the earthquake’s damage, the media began showing the people of Haiti trying to heal spiritually, whether by singing and clapping, sitting down and counseling each other, or playing double-dutch outside.
To respond is also architecture. To respond to environmental stimuli such as natural or man-made disasters, architects must take certain things into consideration, such as the severity of the damage caused, the amount of people affected, how immediate of a response is required, and what victims presently lack.
Perhaps being disaster affected should be viewed as a condition, a condition that gradually is healing overtime. To both respond and promote life through the use of architecture, disaster relief centered design should be viewed as the rehabilitation of the affected community. A living community is a “supra organism” and like all organisms, responds to stimuli with aim to restore homeostasis.
Designing shelters that are too simple will only need to be replaced later on and designing shelters that attempt to accommodate everything would take time. In view of disaster relief, need and comfort should not be separate –architecture must use the ideas of rehabilitation as a design principle and create modular housing which can be broken down into stages. If disaster relief centered design were broken into stages, it is possible to provide immediate support to disaster victims without ultimately having to replace the shelters that were initially setup in the beginning. A stage one relief shelter may provide the bare essentials to sustain life, but perhaps a stage two package could include a comfort related function such as a living space or a bathroom unit that can easily be attached to an existing stage one shelter.
Implementing the same vocabulary throughout the design is imperative. By breaking down relief into stages, it provides the victims with a sense of structure, a structure that is easier for the victims to comprehend and one that alleviates the traumatic stress which they have just experienced. A community on its way of achieving homeostasis rebuilds its way like a physical therapy patient relearning how to use his motor functions: the rehabilitation regiment is divided into exercises which gradually increases in complexity. Disaster relief centered design can lead to prefabricated structures that initially start out as relief shelters that ultimately become permanent housing for disaster victims.
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