Architecture in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake
On average almost 250 million people are affected by natural disasters such as hurricanes, droughts, floods and earthquakes each year. According to the organisation Oxfam, this number is rising, so that by 2015 an average of 375 million people per year will be affected. On March 11th 2011 such a natural disaster hit the country of Japan. With a magnitude of 9.0 Mw and with its epicenter approximately 72 km east of the Oshika Peninsula of Tōhoku in the Pacific Ocean, an earthquake resulted in a major tsunami with waves as high as 40 metres travelling up to 10 km inland. This caused a major destruction of infrastructure and 125,000 buildings damaged or destroyed along
the coastline of Tohoku. 15,760 people were reported dead, 5,926 injured and 4,282 missing. The earthquake was so great that it moved the main island of Japan “Honshu” 2.4 m east and shifted the Earth on its axis by 10 to 25 cm. To make matters worse, the earthquake and tsunami caused a meltdown at the three reactors in the Fukushima I nuclear power plant. After natural disasters, as the one in Japan, it is obvious that the immediate response is a wish to restore the city to its former state. “They believe that the phoenix can rise again from its own ashes.” This, however, will only leave the city in status quo and a new earthquake and tsunami will lead to the same devastating
consequence as of March 11th. Therefore the design of the city has to be rethought, but it is also important not to hide all the signs of the trauma. “Wherever buildings are broken...by fire or structural collapse, their form must be respected in its integrity, embodying a history that must not be denied...In their damaged state they suggest new firms of thought and comprehension...” It is also important that the responsability for the new buildings is not given to companies selling cheap standard manufactured buildings that are placed regardless of the regional environment.
In tho book “Radical Reconstruction” Lebbeus Woods writes the following:
“...people stubbornly stay in earthquake zones, rebuilding after each earthquake in essentially the same way and form as they did before, attempting only corrections that, after the next earthquake, are inevitably proven inadequate. It would be more rational to put aside doctrine ways of thinking and their inherently vulnerable systems, and to create new systems of shaping space, new types of behavior and patterns of thinking and living that accepts earthquakes as an essential aspect of reality.”
In Japan there is now an urgent need for reconstruction and rehabilitation and even though it is impossible to prevent such natural disasters, it is possible to take actions to avoid such devastating
consequences in the future. This leads to the following question. How is it possible to create an architecture which can help in the process of healing a society where huge areas of the city have been damaged, or totally destroyed? An architecture which takes the possibility of a future earthquake in to account and at the same time addresses the fact that energy has become a scarce source after the meltdown of the “Fukushima I” nuclear reactor?
To register the areas destroyed by the earthquake and tsunami, I will travel to the area of Tōhoku north of Sendai where I will join an organisation in cleaning up after the earthquake and tsunami. This will give me a chance to investigate the destroyed areas, which will form the base for the registration of the site. After this I will participate in the UIA Tokyo Workshop Youth Jamboree, which is part of the UIA 2011 Tokyo. The theme of the workshop is “Kizuna - Agenda of Tokyo beyond 3.11”. The task will be to propose new strategies and architectural operations for 16 areas in Tokyo taking the possibility of a future earthquake in to account. During the workshop it will be possible to attend all the lectures of the UIA 2011. Lecturers include Christo (Christo and Jeanne-Claude), SANAA, David Adjaya and Tadao Ando.
After the workshop I will return to Denmark to continue the work on the project. Film and photographs will be used for the registering of the site, and drawings and collages will be used as a method for envisioning the future of Tohoku. Apart from this, model experiments will create a catalogue of thoughts and ideas to shape the new buildings. A key part of the design process will include a study of Japanese way of thinking architecture. The base of this study will be the book
“Japan-ness in Architecture” by Arata Isozaki. The book “Radical Recontruction” by Lebbeus Woods will also be a key part of the studies. As an initial strategy I will work in a scale between building and planning and go into details with one or two buildings. The design of these buildings will suggest a way of envisioning the future of a post traumatised city.
