Resilience - University of Miami School of Architecture

ethical practice
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Resilience
Tropical Coastal Development
and Ecosystem Health
While architects have contributed in many ways to the richness of contemporary
culture, we have also been complicit in the transformaon of living
landscapes into ecologically and socially depauperate environments, nourishing
neither human nor non-human life. The AIA code of ethics specifically
states that architects have an obligaon to pracce in an ethically and environmentally
responsible manner. (AIA Code of Ethics, Canon VI) In his speeches
to the design community, the architect Bill McDonough defines negligence as
proceeding with something we know to be harmful. To this end, we as a profession
have been negligent in our obligaon to design for a physically, socially,
and ecologically sound future.
Nowhere is this more evident than in resort cies like Miami, where the natural
resources which spurred development have been so quickly and dramacally
altered. There is no way back. However, this thesis proposes a way forward
which allows for the dynamic evoluon of both human and natural habit
mediated by a core structure which is both stable and resilient.
4. Miam Art Museum landscape proposal, author
3. Shanghai new town concept, author
urbanism and “nature”
Postmodern ecological theorists have wrien extensively about the arficiality
of our concept of “Nature,” meaning everything which exists outside the
human sphere. In The Social Creaon of Nature, Neil Evernden explains how
this construct is so deeply embedded in our culture that it is difficult to see.
Western religions are based on the assumpon that humans exist outside or
above the rest of nature. Yet the system-oriented foundaon of modern Ecology
is increasingly influencing the way we look at humans’ place in the world.
Ecologists are increasingly recognizing the need to accommodate human settlements
into conservaon planning, while architects and planners are giving
increasing priority to ecological funcons as criteria for design.
Coastal cies like Miami present an especially important challenge. The coastal
zone represents the margin between landscape and seascape, and as a linear
element represents a very small percentage of terrestrial or marine habitat.
Through physical form, chemical characteriscs, and species interacons,
coastal zones are among the most crical and biologically producve places on
earth. They are arguably the most threatened.
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