Case Study of Architecture and Urban Design on the Disaster Life Cycle in Japan

Abstract eng:
Architecture designs should accommodate earthquakes, urban design in populous areas should consider the need to prevent the spread of fires, and resettlement sites for victims of tsunami disasters should be sufficiently removed from the ocean to avoid future tsunami disasters. Although spatial design is an essential component of disaster management, the interrelationships between these fields have rarely been considered in literature. The purpose of this paper is thus to provide a scheme for integrating the areas of spatial design and disaster management based on architectural, urban design, and landscape design case studies in Japan. Since Japan is one of the most disaster-prone countries in the world, numerous disaster-related mitigation measures have been developed. This paper describes the significance of these developments from the viewpoints of the location and social background, and a variety of historical and regional examples related to disaster management are also introduced within this context. The examples are classified into four categories with regards to the purpose for which they were implemented (mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery) and are defined by the theoretical notion of Disaster Life Cycle for disaster management which will be explained later. Finally, the author proposes a systematic scheme to understand poorly defined relationships between spatial design and disaster management, and advocates a new interdisciplinary field between architecture and disaster management.

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