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Can our disproportionate fear of disaster be used as a tool to increase community cohesion and become a catalyst for urban generation?
What defines city living for an upmarket, but paranoid generation bombarded by iconic images of disaster?
Inspired by american studies where, post 9/11, 80% of adults said that they “had an increased appreciation for their families’ while others suddenly had the urge for intimate contact (leading to a phenomenon known as ‘teror sex’), a new form of speculative housing emerges to cater for our everyday fears. ‘Disaster Ready’ housing offers a number of ‘better safe than sorry’ precautionary measures and cost effective architectural placebos to reassure and empower safety consious residents. A ‘holy’ protective mesh surrounds clusters of luxury and key worker apartments. Stage re-enactments help prepare for statistically unlikley disasters, lucky esacapes or heroic failures while landscaped antibacterial gardens fortify residents imunes systems.
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Disaster Ready Housing
Type: Research
Location: Westminster, 2025
Status: Thesis Project
Date: 2012
Collaborators
Project Team:
Alex Smith
Type: Research
Location: Westminster, 2025
Status: Thesis Project
Date: 2012
Collaborators
Project Team:
Alex Smith
Published
Flirting with Disaster was
published in the Architects Journal, Building Magazine and "Darkitecture" a new anthology edited by Iwona Blazwick
Awards
RCA Society and Thames & Hudson ArtBook Prize
Flirting with Disaster was
published in the Architects Journal, Building Magazine and "Darkitecture" a new anthology edited by Iwona Blazwick
Awards
RCA Society and Thames & Hudson ArtBook Prize