Destruction and devastation leave behind a clean slate – offering a unique opportunity to radically rethink our cities and neighborhoods. The opportunity to play, to start from first principles, is something architecture can rarely enjoy, and it is not surprising that rebuilding efforts after natural and manmade catastrophes attract the imagination of architects.The new exhibition at Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) explores the many ways in which cities have been re-imagined in the aftermath of destructive events, from the masterplans that completely reconfigured London after the Great Fire of 1666, to Constitución in Chile, hit by a major earthquake and tsunami in 2010, and the Tohoku earthquake of 2011.“A disaster zone where everything is lost offers the perfect opportunity for us to take a fresh look, from the ground up, at what architecture really is.” writes Toyo Ito, who has significantly contributed to the rebuilding and sheltering efforts post-Fukushima in Japan. Ito and another four architects set up an initiative to provide 'public living rooms' for people to gather after the disaster, Homes for All, which will be featured in the exhibition.The other featured cities will include the rebuilding of Lisbon after the Great Earthquake in 1755, often hailed as the beginning of modern urbanism in Europe; Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871; Metabolist proposals for Hiroshima, Tokyo, and Skopje, the capital of Macedonia destroyed in an earthquake in 1963; the work of Yasmeen Lari in providing amenities and training residents to build their own bamboo homes after the catastrophic floods in Darya Khan in Pakistan in 2010; and others.The exhibition will question the human relationship to nature, as well as the power of architects to instigate change, through an eclectic collection of drawings, photographs, film, books, and models. A contrast will be drawn between the traditional top-down approach, and the more collaborative ways of giving credit to local expertise – something that architecture and urbanism have been slowly learning in recent years (most notably in Christchurch, where rebuilding efforts have been strongly community-based; Christchurch, sadly, is not included in the exhibition). This question touches on the altered, and changing, role of architects in recent times, moving away from the unquestioned authority and towards a community facilitator and educator.A series of accompanying talks will include Yasmeen Lari, Kunlé Adeyemi, NLE, and OMA.Creation from Catastrophe: How Architecture Rebuilds Communities will run from January 27 through April 24 at Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), the Architecture Gallery, in London.
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