Pyro-evader traits
• Ashes to Architectural Ashes: upon destruction nourish not pollute landscapes.
Functional traits translated from ecological to architectural applications in pyro-evaders:
• Architectural DNA [i.e. codes] distributed at multiple spatiotemporal scales.
Panarchistic Architecture
• Environmental sensing, actuating, & analysis informing architectural transitions.
A proposal for the reconciliation of human and nonhuman systems at the wildland-urban-interface
• Pyriscence • Pyrogermination
Pyro-pangenesis
Genus Principles:
Highly attuned to their local environment, when climatic and/or ecological regime shifts occur, pyroevaders evolve in response. As occurs in living organisms, each new pyro-evader generation features data [DNA] mutations that help to ensure the resilience of their architectural species over time and space. Collecitvely, pyro-evaders, pyroendurers, and pyro-resistors, follow three architectural R’s:
Design thinking, practice, and policy brief • Architecture as a cyclic biochemical process of material & information exchange.
• Creative destruction as architectural and urban design brief.
• Architectural genera of 3 variants: pyro-endurers, pyro-evaders, & pyro-resistors.
© Bioratorium Limited & Melissa Sterry 2020 All Rights Reserved
PYROEVADERS
• resprout [replicate]
• Genus variants replicate, reproduce, or resist upon the passing of wildfire.
• redistribute [reproduce]
• Pyro-endurers exhibit resprouting, pyriscence, pyrogermination, & abscission.
• resist [remain].
• Pyro-evaders exhibit pyriscence, & pyrogermination.
Disclaimer A speculative work, which has been created to provoke new architectural and urban thinking and practices when designing for the wildland-urbaninterface, this pamphlet is for use as an educational and learning tool only.
• Pyro-resistors exhibit retardance, abscission, pyriscence, & pyrogermination.
• Evolutionary architecture, forms new species & assemblages in space and time.
• Cradle to not product cradle, nor building cradle, but landscape cradle.
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Regime: Mixed-severity / High-severity Frequency: Low / Intensity: High
Pyro-evaders Fire Regime type
Evolved to persist in wildland-urban interface adjoining mixed and high-severity fire regimes, pyro-evading architectures comprise functional traits selected to evade relatively infrequent, but high intensity fires.
Like their pyro-enduring Panarchistic cousins, pyroevaders back-up their architectural and other valuable and treasured data. But, whereas pyroendurers take a two-pronged approach, the latter rely solely on ‘seed banking’. Shielded either by serotinous structures or buried below ground, thus protected by the insulating properties of mineral soil and/or a synthetic equivalent, seeds of pyro-evaders remain dormant for decades, to be activated by processes which mimick the functional pyrophyte* traits of pyriscence and pyrogermination.
Persisting in landscapes where, historically, fire regimes are so intense as to incinerate flora and architecture alike, pyro-evaders are ‘built to burn’. Designed such that upon wildfire’s passing their materiality is redistributed into its surroundings, pyroevading structures will help propagate both ecological and architectural seeds. Thus, like the Pomo’s people’s ‘wickiup’, pyro-evaders are temporary structures. However, persisting in landscapes where fires are less frequent, though cyclical, their temporality is not seasonal.
Suited to regions where biomass and/or architectural density is high, like their ecological equivalent, pyroevaders nonetheless necessitate the creation of urban landscape mosaics. A feature which increases the probability of heterogeneity in wildfire’s spread, it is posited that ‘mosaical WUI planning’ could provide of pockets of refuge for both residents and/or emergency workers that have too little time to evacuate: a form of shelter in place, the concept which mimics the behaviours of faunal species in the presence of both forest and grass fires. Few materials able to withstand the fire
*Pyrophytes are plants evolved to live with wildfire.
© Bioratorium Limited & Melissa Sterry 2020 All Rights Reserved
intensities that are present in mixed and highseverity fire regimes, it is proposed that pockets of refuge are born principally of landscape architectural interventions that harness understanding of how vegetative state, structure, type, and distribution, together with topography, therein wind speeds and direction, and humidity levels impact upon wildfire behaviour. Research and development thereof will principally involve transdisciplinary programmes populated by, among others fire ecologists, biochemists, atmospheric and other Earth scientists, landscape architects, and data scientists.
Pockets of refuge also provide of safe haven for data seed banks of which the contents inform post-fire recovery. However, whereas the inter-fire periods to which pyro-endurers are adapted are sufficiently brief as afford for architectural cloning, their inter-fire periods spanning not years, but decades, or even centuries, ever-responsive to changes in their environment, and particularly within the fire regime, pyro-evaders ‘evolve’ upon their regeneration.
Reconfigurations in pyro-evaders’ architectural DNA is triggered by environmental cues. Whereas ecological evaders are often endowed with biochemical properties that propagate fire intensities, given the possible risks to human and other faunal life, as may be in near proximity during a wildfire, their architectural cousin exclude this particular trait.
This text is extracted from ‘Panarchistic Architecture: Building Wildland-Urban Interface Resilience to Wildfire through Design Thinking, Practice and Building Codes Modelled on Ecological Systems Theory’, 2018.