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Design after DisasterDana CufF

In th t past decade, as architects and planners, we havetackled America's greatest urban catastrophesin NewOrleans and in Lower Manhattan. In spite of our tenacityand creativity, in sj)ite of desperate need, civic engage-men t, and urgencywe failed. Perhaps different storywill he written w ith greater hindsight, but it seems doubt-ful tha t either of these places, slates wiped violently clean,will be remade in ways that sym bolize what everyonesought: triumph over disaster.

Abo ve: Proposal for a New Orleans Floating House. Marc Kersey of CiarkConsirucDon, Thorn Mayne and Brandon Welling of Morphosis, and To m Dardenof Make it Rifiht discuss ntodel at the chassis prfabrication site at U('L,\. Photoby .Saji Matuk.

Designers involved in these efforts have complainedthat their hands were tied by politics and economics. Butthese forces always predominate in postdisaster scenarios.Are we to conclude that design is inherently emasculatedjust when it could have its greatest impact? Clearly, wemust find more productive ways to operate, so that wecan side with President Obama's Chief ofStaff RahmEm anuel, who famously stated, You never want seriouscrisis to go to waste. 'Lately it seems there is no shortage ofcrises,but thejury is out about the role architects and urbanists will play.Stemm ing from multiyear investigation on the part ofcityLAB,a think tank in the D epartment of Architectureand Urban Design at UCLA, the following seven articlesexplore ways that design can indeed be part o fthe postdi-saster solution.

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Recove rng

Cleaning the SlateW hen it comes to urban places, disasters make theirtiiark through destruction. Fires,floods,wars, hurri-canesthese catastrophes violently rend the city, openingup territories to the schemes of power-brokers and vision-aries alike.T he notion o tabula rasa has always heldacertainattractio n for arc hitects . It suggests potential, a lack ofpreconce ptions, an ;ibiliry to start fre.sh, an o ppo rtun ity tocreate a new world. tabula rasa is conceptually ope n-ended; its indeterminate constraints and program offerthe freetiorn t(t think anew. But more than anyth ing, fordesigners it.satheoretical ly empty site empty ofstruc-tures, context, comprom ise, politics, regulation.Sometitncs, the desire for tabula rasa is so great that weattempt to einpty sites the waywemight empty the trash,with little regard for all thatiscleansedaway.T his was thestory of urban renewal, when vibrant:, poor n eighborhood sin American dow ntowns were demolished to make way forantiseptic corp orate highrises. As I discovered in researchforThe rovisionalCity destruc tion was as much a part ofthe solution as the new urban fabric, but itwasnot nearlyso well planned.

Th ere arc many ways besides destruction to startwitha clean urban slate. Sometimes new territor ies are discov-eredhinterlands that for some reason become feasiblefor development, or open spaces that ch ange ha nds, aswhen military bases are decotntnissioned. Som etitnestechnology makes an uninhabitable place buildable, aswhen levet: construction moved the waters away fromNew Orleans. But often, violence prevailsnatural ormanm adeto create a tabula rasa: the Gulf C oast afterKatrina, Rotterdam after W orld W ar II, Chicago after theCireatI ireot 171,Rome after Nero's conflagration.T he tabula rasa of disaster providesanew startingpoin t. Yet, compared to the tru e clean slate, disaster sitesare profoundly tainted. The violent erasure of historyleavesahighly polemic and traum atized place, wherepolitics, tnctnory, cconotnic interest, and opportunity vietor priority in the proccs.s ot recovery. /Moreover, war-tornsites, from Beirut to L ondon , depend not only on exigen-cies of recovery but narratives of deliverance. In no placehas this conflicted history been as palpable as at Gro undZe ro, w here visions for th e site's future have been steadilyeroded by an ordeal that has afflicted everyone involved,from victims' relatives to city officials.

catastrophe steals awayafuture that can never beimagined , and its site becomesasite of injustice. 1 herole cast for archit ecture in this case is generally to

mem orialize, looking back rather th an forward. But thecoupling of nostalgia andadesperate urgency to forgetcreatesaparadox that may paralyze those charged withrebuilding. swith theC hicagotire, it can take decades fthe redemptive power of the disaster narrative to take theplace ofloss,so that effective recovery can pro ceed.' In thcase of Chicago, deliverance did tinally arrive in the formof innovative architectural departures such as the steelfratne and urban visions like that of the skyscraper, and lika phoenix, the city rose to meet the new urban possibilitieRocovery from ShockT he case studies described here m ake clear that designafter disasterisnot an autonomous project. In otherwords, disasters destroy more than buildings, and tiiorethan buildings need to be reconstructed in their attcrmathT he long historical record of urban and political restructur ing after disaster is evident in Brian Sahotsky's articleon the aftermath of Rome's great fire of 64 C E . In itswake. Emp eror N ero sought to buildaprivate palace inthe formerly public center of the city. Nero's failed ventureas well as his successor's pointed rebuke,isan ancictit example that speaks to Naomi Klein's contemporary analysisof disaster capitalism, the econom ic and political o ppor -tunism that may emerge whenacatastrophe^natural ormanmadeproduces mass disorientation amongapeople.Klein's shock doc trin e holds lessons pertin ent tourban design. Whenacity is rebuilt, is not only the re collective traum a, but also some form of state-scale responsethat holds the capacity for significant restructuring.Claudia Z iegler's study ofa modern Italian catastrophe,postwar M ilan, provides an early example of the po ssibilities of such postcatastrophe reengineering. The city'sarchitecturally striking Pirelli Tower symbolized its placein the new world orderaswell as its triump h over histori-cal impedim ents.Because architects and planners are well aware of thedifficulties of redi recting the urban statu s quo, they mayrelish the possibility in Klein's shock scenarios to createUtopias that w ould o therw ise be impossible. But Klein hailluminated the likelierscenario that oppressive, corpo-rate-state coalitions will dominate recovery in emergencyconditio ns. We see how tho se same interests prevailedin the case of Lower Manhattan, even though broadcommunity supportwasexpressed for innovative designalternatives at Ground Zero. Instead, the develijper, themunicipal and state agencies, and the corporate architec-ture firm SOM maneuvered to exert control. Th e terroristhreat and the need to rebuild formed the excuse that wa

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Recovering

Radical ncrementsW hile Sa itt learns from our failed attempts to implementUtopia, these articles take the opposite approach, by learn-ing from success. As case studies, they dem onstrate whatwe at cityLAB call the power of the radical increm ent.If the cataclysm h;is tended to upbraid the architect,this is not because the problem is too large, but becausethe solution is excessive. In the face of catastrophe,architects and urbanists might do better to appreciatethe logic of accidents. According to the c ultural theoristPaul Virilio, the speed that characterizes contemporarycivilization inherently breeds the accident. EchoingAristotle, V irilio suggested that "the accident revealsthe substance." Th is led him to a conclusion th at fea-tured large in our think ing about design after disaster:"To invent the train is to invent the rail accident ofderailment." T hu s, the levee previsions its ruptu re;the regulation its variance; the security wall its hreach;and construction its deterioratio n. Mowever, when theaccident reveals such substance,italso holds the kernel ofreinvention. Seen from this vantage point, a crisis offersnot a tabula rasa for Utopian dreams, but an opportunityto question old rules.

The floating house proposed by Morphosis and aUCL.A graduate architecture studio tor New Orlean s'Lower N inth Ward breaks plenty of rules when it comesto residential construction. But, as Erin Sm ith recounts,it isacritical piece t)f a large new idea that New Orlean scould thrive without levees. The proposals fora floatinghou.se, orabent house, are radical increments that canlaunch min

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