Disaster, as conventionally referenced by many federal agencies or relief groups, is defined by a quantifiable amount of damage to the environment – both natural as well as constructed – and injury to human life. However, that period of destruction undoubtedly evokes a human response, which can be generalized as a phase consisting of responsive growth and rapid development. Disaster, in fact, begets this growth and social unification through which a group of people are able to renew their attitudes toward the environment and the local community. This revitalization may be physically manifested in the rebuilding of houses, but may more importantly be demonstrated psychologically and emotionally through the reconstruction of homes.

Perhaps, this regeneration can be classified into the categories as aforementioned – a tangible transformation that represents a more immediate response as well as an abstract one that is a reflection of the emotional impact of the disaster. An example of the immediate, physical response is the makeshift shelters that are erected following the destruction of homes (fig. 1).

Figure 1 Tents erected in response to Pakistan’s Deluge in 2010

There is a period of immense productivity and activity when relief workers and those affected by the disaster work to provide these temporary housing units. An example that demonstrates the presence of renewal in such a reaction is the development of new construction strategies that include the community and simplifies the construction process so that participation is all-inclusive and fosters a deeper sense of unity (fig. 2).

Figure 2 Demonstration of Hsieh Ying-Chun’s model for sustainable rebuilding

Disaster can act as an external motivator to unification of the people, and becomes generative from a social perspective. Even in fast and seemingly impersonal relief efforts, there is an overarching sentiment and a shared, recognizable need for renewal and community (fig. 3).

As time distances the actual disaster event, the notion of productivity may find other outlets, such as in a variety of art forms or even through cultural events (fig. 4).

Figure 4 Remembrance of Japan’s disasters and victims during NHK’s Kouhaku 2011

Disaster is a failure of artifacts.

When natural disaster happens, artificial structures are retuned to default in terms of conventional intelligence of structural mechanics. Civilian casualties happen when these artifacts could not properly react to the stress of natural event. In perspective of nature, a concept of disaster per se could not be existed. For nature, every event is just part of its own cycle. A notion of disaster is only applicable in the human-made environment.

Disaster could be considered as a point that form and function of human-made objects meet the limitation.

Construction by human – Deconstruction by nature

Scrutinizing remainders after 3/11 Tsunami in Japan, residues of artifacts could be considered as seriously destructed. However, we could see this process as a deconstruction rather than a destruction. Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, had written about the definition of deconstruction in his mail to his friend in Japan, “To deconstruct was also a structuralist gesture or in any case a gesture that assumed a certain need for the structuralist problematic. But it was also an antistructuralist gesture, and its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity. Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented.”_[1]

In this regards, we could consider disaster as a process of destruction of human artifices. Our conventional knowledge of structure has been critically dissolved by the nature for a recomposition.

1. Derrida, Jacques [1983] Letter to a Japanese Friend, in Wood, David and Bernasconi, Robert (eds., 1988) Derrida and Différance, Warwick: Parousia, 1985