Esther Charlesworth – författare

The demand is now urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding cities and landscapes being destroyed by civil conflict, (un)natural disasters, political instability, and poverty. The number of people fleeing their homes and being displaced by such conflict now totals almost 100 million. Despite the massive human and physical costs of these crises, the number of architects, planners, and landscape architects equipped to work with disaster and development professionals in rebuilding in the aftermath of conflict, floods, fires, earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis remains chronically low. Design for Fragility expands the nascent, but rapidly growing field of humanitarian architecture by exploring 13 design responses to such conflict and displacement across 11 countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Iran, Pakistan, and the USA. Linked to this displacement is the systemic poverty that often lingers from previous colonial territories and eras, in which many of the featured projects in the book are located.This book follows Charlesworth’s Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working After Disasters (Routledge 2014), which analysed the role for architects in exercising ‘spatial agency’ while designing shelter and settlement projects for communities after conflict and disaster. Since that time, the humanitarian architecture movement has expanded globally with the prominence of design agencies including the MASS Design Group and Architecture Sans Frontières (ASF) International. Design for Fragility analyses this role of spatial agency in architecture by addressing diverse conditions of fragility across 13 built projects – from refugee housing in Uganda and an orphanage for teenage girls in Iran to a residential centre in Northern Australia for people with acquired brain injury.Each of the projects profiled in this book explore:The experiences and perceptions of fragility – or precarity – that provided a design challenge and directed the particular spatial response.The specific typology of the project, whether that be a housing, health, children’s, or a First Nations project.The personal values that influenced the architects to work on humanitarian/community projects and how consultation occurred with diverse and often contested project stakeholders.The experiences of the design team as well as project managers, occupants, and donors of the built project, exploring what they deemed successful about the project, and what, if any, were its limitations.Beautifully designed with over 150 illustrations, this practical and inspiring book is for architects, landscape architects, design educators, humanitarian and development aid agencies that are involved, or seeking to be part, of future disaster mitigation and reconstruction strategies and projects, globally.

The demand is now urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding cities and landscapes being destroyed by civil conflict, (un)natural disasters, political instability, and poverty. The number of people fleeing their homes and being displaced by such conflict now totals almost 100 million. Despite the massive human and physical costs of these crises, the number of architects, planners, and landscape architects equipped to work with disaster and development professionals in rebuilding in the aftermath of conflict, floods, fires, earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis remains chronically low. Design for Fragility expands the nascent, but rapidly growing field of humanitarian architecture by exploring 13 design responses to such conflict and displacement across 11 countries, including Australia, Bangladesh, Fiji, India, Iran, Pakistan, and the USA. Linked to this displacement is the systemic poverty that often lingers from previous colonial territories and eras, in which many of the featured projects in the book are located.This book follows Charlesworth’s Humanitarian Architecture: 15 Stories of Architects Working After Disasters (Routledge 2014), which analysed the role for architects in exercising ‘spatial agency’ while designing shelter and settlement projects for communities after conflict and disaster. Since that time, the humanitarian architecture movement has expanded globally with the prominence of design agencies including the MASS Design Group and Architecture Sans Frontières (ASF) International. Design for Fragility analyses this role of spatial agency in architecture by addressing diverse conditions of fragility across 13 built projects – from refugee housing in Uganda and an orphanage for teenage girls in Iran to a residential centre in Northern Australia for people with acquired brain injury.Each of the projects profiled in this book explore:The experiences and perceptions of fragility – or precarity – that provided a design challenge and directed the particular spatial response.The specific typology of the project, whether that be a housing, health, children’s, or a First Nations project.The personal values that influenced the architects to work on humanitarian/community projects and how consultation occurred with diverse and often contested project stakeholders.The experiences of the design team as well as project managers, occupants, and donors of the built project, exploring what they deemed successful about the project, and what, if any, were its limitations.Beautifully designed with over 150 illustrations, this practical and inspiring book is for architects, landscape architects, design educators, humanitarian and development aid agencies that are involved, or seeking to be part, of future disaster mitigation and reconstruction strategies and projects, globally.

Presenting diverse case studies of contemporary sustainable urban practice from Europe, Africa, India, South America, the USA and Australia, this book offers the reader a fantastic wealth of practical material from a range of internationally renowned authors. Each practical case study has addressed issues and then offered solutions to implement sustainable cities across a range of urban scales and cultures. Urgent design challenges explored include population density, recreating infrastructure that supports carbon neutral or low carbon (emission) intensive urban activities, and retrofitting for sustainability.Highly illustrated, thematically focused and with superb global coverage, this book presents a multi-voiced and yet highly cohesive reference for anyone interested in green issues in urban design and architecture.

Presenting diverse case studies of contemporary sustainable urban practice from Europe, Africa, India, South America, the USA and Australia, this book offers the reader a fantastic wealth of practical material from a range of internationally renowned authors. Each practical case study has addressed issues and then offered solutions to implement sustainable cities across a range of urban scales and cultures. Urgent design challenges explored include population density, recreating infrastructure that supports carbon neutral or low carbon (emission) intensive urban activities, and retrofitting for sustainability.Highly illustrated, thematically focused and with superb global coverage, this book presents a multi-voiced and yet highly cohesive reference for anyone interested in green issues in urban design and architecture.

Through 12 case studies from Australia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the USA, this book focuses on the housing reconstruction process after an earthquake, tsunami, cyclone, flood or fire. Design of post-disaster housing is not simply replacing the destroyed house but, as these case studies highlight, a means to not only build a safer house but also a more resilient community; not to simply return to the same condition as before the disaster, but an opportunity for building back better.The book explores two main themes:Housing reconstruction is most successful when involving the users in the design and construction processHousing reconstruction is most effective when it is integrated with community infrastructure, services and the means to create real livelihoods.The case studies included in this book highlight work completed by different agencies and built environment professionals in diverse disaster-affected contexts. With a global acceleration of natural disasters, often linked to accelerating climate change, there is a critical demand for robust housing solutions for vulnerable communities.This book provides professionals, policy makers and community stakeholders working in the international development and disaster risk management sectors, with an evidence-based exploration of how to add real value through the design process in housing reconstruction. Herein then, the knowledge we need to build, an approach to improve our processes, a window to understanding the complex domain of post-disaster housing reconstruction.

Through 12 case studies from Australia, Bangladesh, Haiti, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and the USA, this book focuses on the housing reconstruction process after an earthquake, tsunami, cyclone, flood or fire. Design of post-disaster housing is not simply replacing the destroyed house but, as these case studies highlight, a means to not only build a safer house but also a more resilient community; not to simply return to the same condition as before the disaster, but an opportunity for building back better.The book explores two main themes:Housing reconstruction is most successful when involving the users in the design and construction processHousing reconstruction is most effective when it is integrated with community infrastructure, services and the means to create real livelihoods.The case studies included in this book highlight work completed by different agencies and built environment professionals in diverse disaster-affected contexts. With a global acceleration of natural disasters, often linked to accelerating climate change, there is a critical demand for robust housing solutions for vulnerable communities.This book provides professionals, policy makers and community stakeholders working in the international development and disaster risk management sectors, with an evidence-based exploration of how to add real value through the design process in housing reconstruction. Herein then, the knowledge we need to build, an approach to improve our processes, a window to understanding the complex domain of post-disaster housing reconstruction.

Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short. This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designing projects for communities after the event of a natural disaster. The fifteen case studies featured in the body of the book illustrate how architects can use spatial sensibility and integrated problem-solving skills to help alleviate both human and natural disasters. The cases include:Lizzie Babister - Department of International Development, UK.Shigeru Ban - Winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2014, Shigeru Ban Architects and Voluntary Architects’ Network, Japan.Eric Cesal – Disaster Reconstruction and Resiliency Studio and Architecture for Humanity, Japan.Hsieh Ying Chun – Atelier 3, Taiwan.Nathaniel Corum - Education Outreach and Architecture for Humanity, USA.Sandra D’Urzo - Shelter and Settlements and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland.Brett Moore - World Vision International, Australia.Michael Murphy - MASS Design Group, USA.David Perkes - Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, USA.Paul Pholeros - Healthabitat, Australia.Patama Roonrakwit - Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, Thailand.Graham Saunders - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland.Kirtee Shah - Ahmedabad Study Action Group, India.Maggie Stephenson - UN-HABITAT, Haiti.Anna Wachtmeister - Catholic Organisation for Relief and Redevelopment Aid, the Netherlands.The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as ‘save the world’ modernists, as often portrayed in the design media. The goal is social and physical reconstruction, as a collaborative process involving a damaged community and its local culture, environment and economy; not just shelter ‘projects’ that ‘build’ houses but leave no economic footprint or longer-term community infrastructure. What defines and unites the architects interviewed for Humanitarian Architecture is their collective belief that through a consultative process of spatial problem solving, the design profession can contribute in a significant way to the complex post-disaster challenge of rebuilding a city and its community.

Never has the demand been so urgent for architects to respond to the design and planning challenges of rebuilding post-disaster sites and cities. In 2011, more people were displaced by natural disasters (42 million) than by wars and armed conflicts. And yet the number of architects equipped to deal with rebuilding the aftermath of these floods, fires, earthquake, typhoons and tsunamis is chronically short. This book documents and analyses the expanding role for architects in designing projects for communities after the event of a natural disaster. The fifteen case studies featured in the body of the book illustrate how architects can use spatial sensibility and integrated problem-solving skills to help alleviate both human and natural disasters. The cases include:Lizzie Babister - Department of International Development, UK.Shigeru Ban - Winner of The Pritzker Architecture Prize 2014, Shigeru Ban Architects and Voluntary Architects’ Network, Japan.Eric Cesal – Disaster Reconstruction and Resiliency Studio and Architecture for Humanity, Japan.Hsieh Ying Chun – Atelier 3, Taiwan.Nathaniel Corum - Education Outreach and Architecture for Humanity, USA.Sandra D’Urzo - Shelter and Settlements and International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland.Brett Moore - World Vision International, Australia.Michael Murphy - MASS Design Group, USA.David Perkes - Gulf Coast Community Design Studio, USA.Paul Pholeros - Healthabitat, Australia.Patama Roonrakwit - Community Architects for Shelter and Environment, Thailand.Graham Saunders - International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Switzerland.Kirtee Shah - Ahmedabad Study Action Group, India.Maggie Stephenson - UN-HABITAT, Haiti.Anna Wachtmeister - Catholic Organisation for Relief and Redevelopment Aid, the Netherlands.The interviews and supporting essays show built environment professionals collaborating with post-disaster communities as facilitators, collaborators and negotiators of land, space and shelter, rather than as ‘save the world’ modernists, as often portrayed in the design media. The goal is social and physical reconstruction, as a collaborative process involving a damaged community and its local culture, environment and economy; not just shelter ‘projects’ that ‘build’ houses but leave no economic footprint or longer-term community infrastructure. What defines and unites the architects interviewed for Humanitarian Architecture is their collective belief that through a consultative process of spatial problem solving, the design profession can contribute in a significant way to the complex post-disaster challenge of rebuilding a city and its community.

This series of essays outlines a number of case studies from Europe, North America, Australia and Asia and provides first hand accounts of the experiences that planners, architects and politicians have had in reshaping cities. These insights provide a pragmatic assessment of the challenges and constraints posed by changing patterns of urban growth in a broad spectrum of urban environments. The reader will discover, through these multiple voices and views, the diverse forms of global cities, and will have a grasp of where the debate on urban design stands today, and where it may be going in the future.

From the targeted demolition of Mostar’s Stari-Most Bridge in 1993 to the physical and social havoc caused by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, the history of cities is often a history of destruction and reconstruction. But what political and aesthetic criteria should guide us in the rebuilding of cities devastated by war and natural calamities?The title of this timely and inspiring new book, Architects Without Frontiers, points to the potential for architects to play important roles in post-war relief and reconstruction. By working “sans frontières”, Charlesworth suggests that architects and design professionals have a significant opportunity to assist peace-making and reconstruction efforts in the period immediately after conflict or disaster, when much of the housing, hospital, educational, transport, civic and business infrastructure has been destroyed or badly damaged.Through selected case studies, Charlesworth examines the role of architects, planners, urban designers and landscape architects in three cities following conflict - Beirut, Nicosia and Mostar - three cities where the mental and physical scars of violent conflict still remain. This book expands the traditional role of the architect from 'hero' to 'peacemaker' and discusses how design educators can stretch their wings to encompass the proliferating agendas and sites of civil unrest.

In Jerusalem, Israeli and Jordanian militias patrolled a fortified, impassable Green Line from 1948 until 1967. In Nicosia, two walls and a buffer zone have segregated Turkish and Greek Cypriots since 1963. In Belfast, "peaceline" barricades have separated working-class Catholics and Protestants since 1969. In Beirut, civil war from 1974 until 1990 turned a cosmopolitan city into a lethal patchwork of ethnic enclaves. In Mostar, the Croatian and Bosniak communities have occupied two autonomous sectors since 1993. These cities were not destined for partition by their social or political histories. They were partitioned by politicians, citizens, and engineers according to limited information, short-range plans, and often dubious motives. How did it happen? How can it be avoided?Divided Cities explores the logic of violent urban partition along ethnic lines-when it occurs, who supports it, what it costs, and why seemingly healthy cities succumb to it. Planning and conservation experts Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth offer a warning beacon to a growing class of cities torn apart by ethnic rivals. Field-based investigations in Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia are coupled with scholarly research to illuminate the history of urban dividing lines, the social impacts of physical partition, and the assorted professional responses to "self-imposed apartheid." Through interviews with people on both sides of a divide-residents, politicians, taxi drivers, built-environment professionals, cultural critics, and journalists-they compare the evolution of each urban partition along with its social impacts. The patterns that emerge support an assertion that division is a gradual, predictable, and avoidable occurrence that ultimately impedes intercommunal cooperation. With the voices of divided-city residents, updated partition maps, and previously unpublished photographs, Divided Cities illuminates the enormous costs of physical segregation.

From the targeted demolition of Mostar’s Stari-Most Bridge in 1993 to the physical and social havoc caused by the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, the history of cities is often a history of destruction and reconstruction. But what political and aesthetic criteria should guide us in the rebuilding of cities devastated by war and natural calamities?The title of this timely and inspiring new book, Architects Without Frontiers, points to the potential for architects to play important roles in post-war relief and reconstruction. By working “sans frontières”, Charlesworth suggests that architects and design professionals have a significant opportunity to assist peace-making and reconstruction efforts in the period immediately after conflict or disaster, when much of the housing, hospital, educational, transport, civic and business infrastructure has been destroyed or badly damaged.Through selected case studies, Charlesworth examines the role of architects, planners, urban designers and landscape architects in three cities following conflict - Beirut, Nicosia and Mostar - three cities where the mental and physical scars of violent conflict still remain. This book expands the traditional role of the architect from 'hero' to 'peacemaker' and discusses how design educators can stretch their wings to encompass the proliferating agendas and sites of civil unrest.