Core Time

[P-01] TRACING 3.11.11

*Akari Nakai Kidd¹, *Daniel Gibbs¹ (1. Deakin University, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Geelong, Australia)

Keywords:architecture, resilience, tracing, recovery, community

More than eight years have passed since the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. While many reconstruction efforts in disaster-stricken communities have been completed, or are coming to completion, there remains a slow and continued state of recovery and rehabilitation, both physically and emotionally. The ARCHITECTURE OF RESILIENCE (TRACING 3.11.11) design studio (an architectural design studio at Deakin University, School of Architecture and Built Environment, Geelong, Australia) aims to develop an ongoing dialogue between architectural practitioners, academics, students, and affected communities to build them back better and stronger, considering the importance of memory, and the nature of resilience, in the context of architecture and rehabilitation. By accurately mapping the site as it was before the event, during the event, 8 years onwards, and now, in the present, the (TRACING 3.11.11) studio draws and reconstructs the site of Kesennuma as an accumulation of events, and by recording them reaffirms and seeks to re-create them as positive influences on developing mechanisms for future development and recovery. The poster will present the investigation, documentation and drawing of the specific site of Kesennuma with pre, during and post-disaster conditions by students of architecture, specifically illustrating three drawing processes: 1) DOCUMENTING AND MAPPING – accumulation, finding and revealing traces of pre-tsunami conditions, 2) DRAWING AND TRACING 3.11.11 – understanding the entropic nature and force of natural disasters, and 3) ACTING AND PROPOSING – proposing architectural structures emerging from the documented site and drawn traces. At the confluence of these three complex processes, lies myriad opportunities to understand past, present and future Kesennuma and propose ideas of how to create architectural structures that seek to “build back better”. These drawings and structures, together, become the record of 3.11, not only addressing the changing condition of the physical site, but also communicating, recovering and retaining the communities’ remembrance of 3.11.11.