Architectures for Emergencies

Among the different meanings of “emergency” this book focuses particularly on the post-crisis reconstruction, including both natural and man-made disasters: earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, pollution, global climate change, post-war reconstructions, to those who everyday deal with an armed conflict. 

To face an emergency means to deal with problems of different kinds, some require immediate attention, others longer times. Sometimes it is a matter of providing housing to those who have lost theirs – in the following pages we will try to explore the debate between temporary and permanent shelters –, other times it is matter of safeguarding human dignity, without forgetting the importance of the memory of places.

David Sanderson, one of the authors in this issue, following the earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile, wrote: “Architects are often the last people needed in disaster reconstruction”, because they often focus on buildings rather than on people.

That’s true. But there is many other architects who are engaged in many sites in the world offering their professional knowledge to less fortunate people, building with quality, providing intelligent and unexpected solutions to common problems, taking into account the health, the joy and the cultural training of the people for whom they are offering a service. For them neither distance nor the fatigue of the journey matter, they don’t think about how “trendy” the design they have just finished is, they do not linger on the beauty of a refined material. These architects do very much with very little. They do their best to use local materials in the most effective way, to transfer building knowledge, they commit themselves to promote the cultures they encounter, sometimes creating objects of unprecedented poetry.

Today there is much talk about the economy, and less frequently about culture. Indicators and statistics can tell us many things, except the essential: if our way to build and to dwell is contributing to the happiness and peace of those who live in those places.