Architectural Risks Rethinking Practice and Spatial Production in Post-Disaster Scenarios

The notion of place-making or rather the production of space and place, especially in highly contested arenas including those of a post-disaster nature, is a complex, profoundly developmental process, risky in suggesting transformative aims and multiple due to the different domains in which it exists. Such complexity materializes politically and institutionally in a spatial realm where the expediency of required reconstruction often threatens high standard architectural production and the incorporation of future preventive measures, and in a societal arena where the erosion of community, livelihoods and security potentially trigger social fragmentations and dissolution of place. Drawing from the ontology of Foucault and Lefebvre, a discursive context frames current challenges facing the production of the built environment. The authors’ central argument suggests that an augmented perception of space would help link social and material needs while questioning the set of emblematic elements of architecture’s technique and limits, leading to a renewed sense of critically anthropocentric practice. What is fundamental for us is not a total dismissal of the discipline of architecture in these situations, but rather a calling for a re-engagement of architecture with social practice. In other words, Architects might be the last persons needed, but Architecture is surely fundamental. It requires a necessary change in the traditional identity and approach of architects - meaning that if they understand the complexity of community and have an attitude of ‘people first’, if the context and situation deemed it, they would shift their role to what is needed in that given situation, which might indeed mean buggering-off. This is not meant to resolve an inherent architectural problem, but rather suggests a radical rethinking of how architecture and the production of spaces, becomes a kind of barometer by which to gauge the relation of self and world, a medium for facilitating collective assertion not as a finished product, but as a process in constant development and evolution