Abstract

A B S T R A C T

Post-disaster recovery is always a contemporary topic and challenges governments, urban designers, and architects (Berke and Cambanella 2006). It is crucial to help individuals identify their position and value in life in conjunction with the context of culture and their expectations, aims, standards, and cares (Adarlan et al., 2011). Vietnam is one of the South Asian countries most vulnerable to cyclones (Phong and Tinh 2010, as quoted by Tran 2015, 63). Natural disasters such as floods, dry spells, and landslides strike Quang Nam yearly, wreaking havoc on socio-economic activity and the ecosystem (Le Anh and Vu, 2013). Disasters* push the victims into miserable states and strip their most valued things away, ranging from physical subjects like family, friends, memories-filled souvenirs to mental objects as a sense of being safe and secure. This leaves affected residents vulnerable to a number of factors occurring only within life-after-disaster that would include individual to societal scales and from the physical, the community, and the individual dimensions. (Donavan, 2013). Despite increased readiness for natural disasters, there is no long-term approach to dealing with the magnitude of environmental disasters in the upcoming future. (Le Anh and Vu, 2013)

Throughout this research journey, the notion of “Architecture of Healing” and “Relevant person-environment” theories will get scrutinised to identify a set of needed spaces and design features which can help to release the survivors from three significant consequences in post-disaster: disempowerment, disconnection to place and ravage of emotion and psychology (Donovan, 2013). The methodology includes studying how architectural factors trigger post-disaster psychological trauma and exploring the relationship between people, environment and healing through research articles and books. In addition, with the exploration in different adaptive rehabilitation precedents targeting relative healing features, this research hopes to end up with an architectural guideline for spatial planning in designing a “disaster rehabilitation centre” in Central Vietnam.

The centre emphasises the indoor and outdoor ambience to facilitate social connections, psychological resilience and self-empowerment for the people who lost everything and are incapacitated to bring their life back on track after the disaster. In addition, the proposed year-round program for this centre helps empower the local community to transform an at-risk community into a disaster-resilient community.