- Disasters are terrible
- Terrible things call for human ingenuity
- Human ingenuity is aesthetic
Disaster is aesthetic? Wait. No.
Before I alienate you with my faulty logic, I can assure you it is the very faulty logic that I am questioning. Like the Parks who stare at the windows of their house at the heavy rain, admiring the view and completely being oblivious of its consequences to the Kims of the world, it is problematic. Yes, it’s a Parasite reference.
We entered 2020 with a terrible start on a climatic standpoint. In Australia, bush fires that started since as early as September 2019 has since still been burning due to continued drought and hotter and drier climate. On the other side of the ocean, in Jakarta, the New Years Day was met with flooding – a result of both years of uncontrolled water subsidence issues and rising sea levels. And these are only two examples of climate emergencies we are facing right now.
Architects, due to our guilt for being part of a sector most responsible to the climate crisis, and our problem saving nature (the scope of the problem, and its solving, continues to be questioned), we tend to come up with designs, schemes, exhibitions to provoke thought of what can be done in the face of this disaster. In the 2010’s from student projects, competitions, to government projects, natural disaster is seeing a lot of attention as a theme.
Of course, post-apocalyptic aesthetic is not new. Anyone who has seen drawings by Lebbeus Woods, with its odd landscapes and jagged materiality would be familiar with the style. Though his work in War and Architecture, which was based on the violence in Sarajevo, is more complex and requires further reading, I argue that his style has had a profound impact on the fascination on post-apocalyptic landscapes and forms.
Keeping up to this theme, in January 2020, the Singapore Arts and Science museum opened a museum wide exhibition about the future life in Singapore, and the future is bleak. Superflux, a London experiential design studio, designed the exhibition “Mitigation of Shock”. It depicts an immersive experience of how life would be like in a post-apocalyptic world, when the city is flooded. Flash flooding is a problem even in Singapore, and in the Island country, as with in many island countries around the world, the effects of the rising sea levels, our fondness for density and concrete developments has resulted in the big question of where do water go to in the city? The exhibition describes life after “water-world”. It contains a detailed real-life imitation of a living room in that time, when the resources were scarce, and each household have to grow their own plants (Ikea sells those tools now if you want to start). There’s a stamp book for grocery quotas, hunting paraphernalia as people would resort to hunting for food, and solar panels for energy.
This brings me back to the cold truth of the story. The irony of the January exhibition in Singapore is that at the same time of the exhibition, the same urban flooding was happening on the other side of the strait. Jakarta was having one of the worst floods in a few years. The people most affected were the poor, those who lives in slums, low-tide areas, it resulted in mass human displacements. Other than that, normalcy in the lives of everyday people of Jakarta were disrupted. The government of Jakarta had failed to commit to a plan to stop or mitigate the flood. And just like in Parasite, the poor people are more severely affected by disasters, with no thresholds and supports on their reach. The results of a climatic disaster is: displacement, economic uncertainties, lack of resource, and also future climatic disaster.
The parallels I could draw between Parasite and “Mitigation of Shock” is that like the Park’s youngest, the exhibition seem to portray taking on the issues I’ve surmised, like it is a Wes Andersen-esque adventure – with self-sufficiency and curated collectibles. It is a strange sort of Dystopian thinking, which would reflect a society’s anxiety, but don’t worry it is also a Utopia – with its self-sufficiency, resourcefulness of the people, and the established governmental system. It is indeed a parallel to the Parks, looking at the rain, unworried, as the sun will come out, tomorrow (They’ll have a party too!).
Perhaps you might ask why I would fuss about one exhibition such as this. I would argue that it is worth to talk about how we talk about our climate emergency, and how we design for it, and especially how we educate people about it. I think we can stop the disaster survival aesthetics and give space on how we can conserve instead. What are the things being done that has been successful, things that can inspire people to innovate, vote, demand, etc, for their land, or to start conversation and not to end it.
The Zalige bridge in the Netherlands is designed to be submerged at some points of the year due to rising sea levels. Designed by Dutch Architecture company NEXT Architecten, it was made so that people can “experience the changing sea levels”. The sea level could rise to 11.5 NAP+ where the bridge would disappear, and normally it would be 7 NAP+. What normally is a threat here is taken as something beautiful and even poetic, experiential.
The Zalige bridge project was a part of a landscape project called Room for the Waal, after in 1993 to 1995, the threat of flood became real, the dikes were only managing to hold, as people had to be evacuated. The government responded with a nationwide program, to make space in river sides for floods to happen slowly, and thus mitigating the sea level rise.
Perhaps it is this: the design for disasters, or impending disasters, could not be in the hands of one designer or thinker looking at one problem. The beautiful Zalige bridge was a result of a team of designers and local government working together to solve a single issue. Designing for disasters thus must think of the system it is designing for, lest it could be seen as too childish, naïve, or tone deaf like the Parks.
I will close with another nod to Lebbeus Woods, quoting his reflection on his work in Sarajevo. Even if war cannot be equated with climatic disasters, it is a similar traumatic and disastrous event that causes destruction of cities, death and displacement of people.
“Again, I strongly believe that reconstructions should be designed by local architects, who understand the local conditions far, far better than I ever could. I did and still do feel, equally strongly, that I and other ‘conceptualists’ can make a contribution to reconstruction on the level of principle, because we can more readily have a broader view, not having directly suffered the trauma of our city’s destruction and its lingering emotional and intellectual effects.”
“Zalige Bridge: the Dutch Bridge Showing Sea Level Rise Is Here.” UrbanNext RSS 092, urbannext.net/zaligebrug/.
Frearson, Amy. “Superflux Shows How Future Homes Might Face Realities of Climate Change.” Dezeen, 4 Jan. 2020, http://www.dezeen.com/2019/12/31/superflux-mitigation-of-shock-climate-change-future-imagined/.
Woods, Lebbeus. “WAR AND ARCHITECTURE: Three Principles.” LEBBEUS WOODS, 16 Dec. 2011, lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/war-and-architecture-three-principles/).
*needsmorecitation 