What does it take to rebuild? What does it mean to RE Build? And what does it truly take to rebuild with resilience?
As Founder and CVO of MCTIGUE — an architecture practice based in Los Angeles — here's what this all means from my perspective.
I am an Architect: one who's been in this work for over 44 years, building on a career that included the great fortune to have worked on very large scale projects — regionally-impactful buildings, off-grid offices — and some very tiny projects like mobile homes for the missing middle.
Perhaps more importantly, I am a father of four, a partner of 16 years to a mother of two. I'm a brother to five, an uncle, cousin, step brother. I am a neighbor, a committee member, a cyclist and club member. I am an individual and I am part of a larger context: my neighborhood, community, city and more.
I am no different than any of us. We are individuals. We are all neighbors. And we live and work in the places we create on this precious planet.
One overriding aspect of what makes us all part of a whole — part of culture, society and more — is our ability and our cooperative compulsion to live and work together. To do this, we have long recognized that we need to prepare for uncertainty, for change, for impacts, momentary storms and major disasters ... and afterwards, to regain our footing, build and create anew.
This is Resilience. Whether we recognize it or not, we all manage our lives with varying degrees of it.
Resilience as a mindset includes both personal vulnerability and shared community values. My own story of resilience includes challenges in life, family and work. I grew up with a father who suffered from MS. I married, had four kids, and later divorced. Two years ago, my ex was diagnosed with cancer, and last year she passed away. This January, I lost both my home and my office in the Palisades fire and, the most painful of all, I lost my oldest son to mental illness this past April.
I tell you all of this to invite you to consider the challenges in your own lives and humanity: the highs and the lows, significant moments and radical impacts. Consider how you adapted to those situations. How did you manage? What did you do yourself, and what included family and community?
Persevering with resilience is not always easy. It's not always a choice we see readily, but it is a way to live with hope and opportunity — a way to rise from what we lost and create what can even be better than before.
There are said to be Four pillars of this kind of personal resilience. The Mental includes our ability to see our way through tough circumstances. Physical involves our ability to adapt to stresses, injuries, and changing conditions. Our guiding faith and beliefs compose the Spiritual pillar, and our families, communities — even our work — embody the Social.
The Four Pillars of Resilient Architecture
In our built world of architecture, there also are these same pillars of resilience:
Mental
The intelligent systems of a building and how they respond to conditions. We can design these to respond to external stimuli and protect a home or building
Physical
A building's materials, systems, form and size. We can design the physical to protect when needed, to permit when conditions are positive, and to adapt to changes over time.
Spiritual
The qualities of space and how we interact with them. We can create space that inspires and uplifts — one that provides a sense of belonging, security, and safety through its very nature.
Social
The context a building sits within, the community that it relates to, and the connectivity of the whole — whether it be a street, a neighborhood, or a city. We can create positive interactions and dialogue, so to speak, of our building and others.
To design resiliently means to embrace and solve for all of these pillars — enhancing how well people can live, work, and communicate with each other within a space. It means consciously choosing materials and systems that benefit the building and enhance our planet's longevity, incorporating experiential elements that influence qualitative wellness, and contextualizing the home or building with the surrounding community and people in beneficial ways. That's resilient building.
Rebuilding Resiliently, Right Now
So what do we need to do to rebuild resiliently, right now? Well, in many ways, we rebuild resiliently just as we build: by using materials and systems that stand up to hazards and stresses. Working with new, experienced and aligned team members. Recognizing that there is very real demand for resilience. Designing in ways that promote — perhaps even guarantee — cost effectiveness and insurability. Making resilience tangible, approachable, and measurable.
Meanwhile, we must also acknowledge there are other significant, human concerns to consider. We must recognize what the enormous rebuild demand means to community, region, and even the nation. Recognize the overwhelming stress and weight on others as they move forward, deciding to build, sell, or wait. Manage the chronic and potentially debilitating discomfort that comes with change and new ways of operating.
As architects, engineers, builders, and others in service to the unprecedented recovery we face this very moment, we must adapt and get out of our comfort zones. We are called to change our processes in ways that include scalable, sustainable, adaptable approaches, and we must do so with the utmost of care — for people, for place and for this planet.
When we consider the vastness of the recent fire damage — the wide open conditions of land now nearly all cleared — where homes, shops and restaurants, schools and churches, parks and playgrounds once existed, we can feel the devastation.
With that shock comes the urge to move quickly — to put back what once was — but we also can realize the rare opportunity to come to the challenge with optimism, with inspiration, with vision.
We can attempt to recreate the past by imagining something that was there before but cannot truly exist now, or we can embrace our present circumstances and future potential with hope, care, intelligence and forethought by rebuilding with resilience.
This is the choice before us.