BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY

HISTORY AND THEORY

 

Architecture in the Time of Disaster

Karima Benbih, Washington Alexandria Architecture Center

 

ABSTRACT

What is the role of architecture in easing the path to dealing with traumas, loss and destruction, in settings that rarely allow discussion about concepts of architectural practice and theory?  While disasters are by definition exceptional, rare events, they are paradoxically becoming almost commonplace. In view of this, how can we re-conceive the entropic condition of living in disaster?

In the face of loss, memory is what one is left with. It is the sum of all past experiences, including that of disaster, but it also is the basis on which future is projected.  ‘Resilience’ theories assume bouncing back and rebuilding after a tragedy as if nothing happened, meaning erasing part of that memory and creating a gap in time in order to return to ‘normal’. However, the imagery that destruction elicits in the human mind is indicative of the fact that ruin, particularly the one that is suddenly created, rather than caused by age and abandonment, holds a place that can inform our relationship with the built environment. The paper will focus on the locus of memory according to Henri Bergson’s theory of duration, and will explore how these concepts, as they are collectively understood, are exposed and challenged in extreme cases of mass destruction, because destruction of built spaces triggers actions/reactions that can only be predicated because of the disaster itself.

It is in disaster-scapes that we inherently face the relationship between memory, loss and the search of beauty that characterizes the human condition, as exemplified by Andre Malraux’s 1933 novel, La Condition Humaine.  Rather than a model of ‘resilience’, we need to integrate the gap of disaster into the reality of human life. I will conclude that architecture has a key role to perform in accepting and remembering crisis by finding beauty in the perseverant human struggle.

 

BIO

Karima Benbih is a visiting researcher at the Washington Alexandria Architecture Center and a

reconstruction specialist working with the World Bank. She is holds a PhD in Architecture and

Design Research from Virginia Tech. Her research interests revolve around post-disaster

reconstruction, resilience, identity, memory and time.