Jayda Brown

Advisor: Shawn Bailey

The image is divided into three sections: on the left, a collage of damaged homes in Jamaica showcases hurricane destruction. The middle features an abstract black-and-white pattern representing Hurricane Wilma at a 1:5000 scale. On the right, images of Ocho Rios' architecture and landscapes blend with an overlay of Hurricane Wilma.
On the right: House of Collapse - A collage of different Jamaican homes and structures that were destroyed in Hurricanes over the years. In the middle: an Interpretive footprint physical model of Hurricane Wilma at 1:5000 scale. On the left: a collage using images of existing architecture and landscape in Ocho Rios, Jamaica with an outlined underlay of Hurricane Wilma.
The image is split into two sections. On the left, diagrams explore how architectural structures can protect humans during calamities, featuring layers like "Architectural Shell" and "Projection of the Self," with accompanying explanations about physical forces and threats. Below, abstract black-and-white topographic-like patterns appear.
On the right: a collage using images of existing architecture and landscape in Ocho Rios, Jamaica with an outlined underlay of Hurricane Wilma. On the lower left: an Interpretive footprint physical model of Hurricane Wilma at 1:5000 scale. On the top left: a parti analysis of Embodied Stories illustrating building permeability and internalized long-term effect on human psyche post-calamity.
The image is a timeline of 21st-century hurricanes in Jamaica, with graphs showing wind speed and pressure. Black-and-white photographs of damage accompany satellite images, labeled by name, date, and intensity. A legend identifies storm categories and land masses.
A Timeline of hurricanes that have impacted Jamaica throughout the 21st century with corresponding wind speed and pressure.
The image is a digital collage split into two sections: the left shows monochromatic, skeletal outlines of hurricane-damaged Jamaican homes, emphasizing fragility and loss of identity; the right features vibrant, colorful depictions of the same homes, highlighting resilience, cultural richness, and enduring identity, with green foliage and blue skies.
House of Collapse - A collage of different Jamaican homes and structures that were destroyed in Hurricanes over the years. The left illustrates the stripping of identity, the mundane of sameness. The right illustrates the existing cultural identity and individuation of the self.
The image is divided into two sections: the top shows two top-down views of a Jamaican house model at 9 a.m. and 12 p.m., with color gradients indicating light intensity across rooms. The bottom section features heightfield illustrations showing fluctuations in the intangible realm at 9 a.m., 12 p.m., 4 p.m., and 6 p.m., using red, yellow, and green to represent intensity.
On top view left and right: an illustration of a model of a typical Jamaica house with light view visualization on 10/19/2005 at 9 a.m. and 12 p.m. On the bottom: a side view heightfield illustration is the model of the heightfield of the Jamaican home test of potentially varying occurrences in relationship to the intangible realm.
The image is divided into two sections: the top shows two square illustrations of a Jamaican house at different times, with varying lighting and furniture outlines. The bottom section displays four side-view heightfield illustrations, showing fluctuations at different times on October 19, 2005, in red, yellow, and blue.
On top view left and right: an illustration of a model of a typical Jamaica house with light view visualization on 10/19/2005 at 6 p.m. and 4 p.m. On the bottom side: a view heightfield illustration is the model of the heightfield of the Jamaican home test of potentially varying occurrences in relationship to the intangible realm.

Embodied Stories: Conserving Vernacular Fragility amid Natural Disasters   

Can architecture intervene and act as a protective skin amid calamity to preserve the self? Familiar spaces for human beings can often evoke feelings of security, comfort, refuge and protection. In The Body Keeps the Score Bessel van der Kolk indicates, “scared animals return home, regardless of whether home is safe or frightening.”1 For many home was the first understanding of physical space manifesting security from the outer unfamiliar world. Throughout our lives, spaces are where intimate stories and memories reside. The inner world is projected outward creating an atmospheric space of the ego within the building envelope.2 This atmosphere of subjective reality, memory, and artifacts is reminiscent of individual existence, and the amalgamation of shared realities.3  

Architecture is a spatial projection of the human body. Like architecture, the human body embodies the inner self and through various layers of skin, muscle and bone acts to protect the self from physical threats. However, like the human body, many natural threats expose the permeability of the building and its inhabitants. In calamity, the fragility of architecture is consequently felt physiologically, metaphysically and psychologically as there is a threat to the preservation of self, the human body and mere existence.  

Sheltering has been consistent throughout time. This is evident in Jamaica where vernacular homes are passed down generationally for protection. Natural disasters have been consistent throughout Jamaica’s history altering the landscape and built-realm.4 The magnitude, scale and force of hydrometeorological events fluctuate throughout time where homes in poorer low-land communities malfunction in its midst.5 Additive architecture can reinforce the promise of sheltering and mutualistically react to the physical vulnerabilities of a building against lateral mass and forces. This may have the capacity to preserve memories, reverse entropic processes and reduce mortality due to building collapse and catapulted debris in the cataclysmic aftermath.6 

Suppose protection and sheltering always reside in the built realm, despite reckless threats. Does architecture have the potential to function systematically like any organism with the primary function of protecting its internal systems and host? If so, does architecture have the capacity to react more organically to unpredictable threats and repair itself accordingly? If the I threat could be reduced through reinforcing and retrofitting familiar spaces that “scared [humans] return to”7 when a natural disaster occurs. A sense of safety can be restored and the familiar space continues to act as a physical boundary from outer world threats.  

Inevitably hurricanes, floods and seismic activity are recurring and ongoing yearly in many countries. For years natural disasters have torn through the architectural fabric while eroding and rupturing the landscape. Therefore, the architectural intention is to create a responsive additive system with the function of conserving the existing context. The objective is that utilizing both the existing landscape and architecture will create a first line of defence that optimizes existing resources to minimize an ongoing threat, instead of rebuilding and erasing the enriched socio-cultural aspects of the society, preserving the self and human existence.