Simon Beames, Kenneth Fraser
Where does the singularity of an urban artefact begin?...in the event and in the sign that it has marked the event. – Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City, 1984
Events have their own fluidity, shifting – politically, economically, technically, culturally and tectonically. We are used to recognising persistent architectural elements that have modified over long periods of time and have evolved in a more complex way than the host economy. This implies the existence of typological constants, yet no type exists for resisting earthquakes. The immunity of the surviving structures has not been passed down through the building vernacular to subsequent building offspring. Should there be a fault-line vernacular?
In February 2010 the Haiti earthquake, the most deadly in modern history, killed 222,570 people, devastating the urban environment. The super-specificity of designing for earthquake zones should extend from buildings to the landscape and planting which forms their habitat. The relationship between a specific location and the architecture it sustains is both singular and universal. While this concept is well researched in topographic or functional terms we would like to emphasise the conditions and qualities within undifferentiated space which are necessary for the safety and security of the ubrban artefact.
While earthquake design is embedded in building codes, we want to find ways to embed the engineering aspects in the broader agenda of the role of building within the social structure of communities – a haven. Our interest lies in designing and cataloguing systems and typologies to shape the many reciprocal relationships that can be established through the dangers of the settings – whether ecological, hydrological, material and climatic or cultural and aesthetic.
Projects developed by the unit will survey a broad range of interactions to generate interventions at differing scales while pursuing a rigorously green agenda that by its nature is transdisciplinary and reliant on collaboration and context. The typological studies will be tested at a territorial level, through the development of collaborative networks and partners.
Technical ambitions will guide the unit’s work through an investigation into the reappropriation of digital tool-making and of accurate means to predict the behaviour of materials under severe loads. The expectations of the unit are technical, social and critical, emphasising the development of workable systems for addressing the danger of place.
Image: On screen: Haiti 2010. In book: Jürg Conzett’s Ottoplatz Building stress fields, from the AA Publication Structure as Space
Unit Staff
Simon Beames is a director of Youmeheshe (youmeheshe.com) and architect for COTE, an NGO involved in construction and re-socialisation following conflict and disaster, completing community projects in Romania and Kosova.
Kenneth Fraser has taught at the AA since 2007 and is a director of Kirkland Fraser Moor Architects (k-f-m.com). He has also served as an RIBA external examiner, an advisor to the Department of the Environment Construction Research and Innovation Strategy Panel and as an Arts Council of England Architectural Assessor.
