3 minute read
7.BACK TO SQUARE ONE
from F.Y.I MAGAZINE
BACK TO SQUARE
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Post-Apocalyptic architecture
The world is back at square one. All structures, big and small, have been razed to the ground. All that remains is debris and a few lucky survivors. How will the human society start rebuilding itself? Will the architecture that emerges be an attempt to recreate the past? Or will it be something extraordinarily different. The world might tip into dingy survivalist citadels, or rise up to vibrant innovative forms as a compensation for all that has been lost. It is safe to assume that the new world would be nothing like the one now, but it would still be eerily familiar.
-Manasvi Patil In today’s fully functioning world, construction materials are mass produced, ordered and transported to the site. But in a world where all that remains of these industries is a pile of debris, where does the building material come from? With the world terrain reset, will the architecture have to go back to square one? Will there be scavenger hunts to salvage the last remaining dredges of infrastructure? Or will completely new material be used?
Most probably, the post-apocalyptic architecture that first arises might be a
common community hall, reinforced against wild animals and the weather, and small individual houses. Would the most sensible material to use be mud? Or would a completely new norm fall into place. Further evolution of the architecture might be a combination of the readily available debris and mud. Nostalgia might direct the forms to be similar to those that were destroyed. There may develop a culture of integrating salvaged scrap from famous structures to preserve it. A vision of chaotic sustainability comes to mind, a motley arrangement of materials that have no correlation to one another except for the fact that they have faced the brunt of the Apocalypse. Driven by the urge to create a semblance of normalcy, a twisted architecture could take over, defeating its manifesto by its own existence.
After the first wave of danger has passed and survival is easier, the next generation would emerge. A generation of humans who would never see the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel tower or the Colosseum, who will grow in awe of these wonders, after hearing about them from their parents. But they won’t understand the significance of that small piece of colourful glass from the Rose window of Notre Dame that their grandmother keeps. They won’t know why a little piece of white marble from the Taj Mahal is such a priced possession of their parents.
After the survival period is over, and the people grow tired of the bland houses, there might be a reformation, introducing new methods, new thoughts. When the last person from the pre- apocalyptic era has passed away and there is no one to tell how the past was, will the humans reinvent the same things? Will bricks immediately again become the norm? Will structures develop underground? Will the forms remain cubicle? The new generation may choose to keep rebuilding the relics of the past, or keep souvenirs and vow not to make the same mistakes. Will the world emerge into something sensitive towards resources, respectful towards nature?
Mistakes are followed by improvement. If the world gets a do-over, the survivors may develop to be more considerate, more sensitive. If or when the apocalypse happens, and the homo sapiens somehow survive, the new world that gets built will be the upgraded version, or so one can hope. Upgraded or not, without documentation, history starts fading away. Perhaps the stories of the pre- apocalyptic world would be dismissed as exaggeration and termed as mythology after enough time has passed. Perhaps this has happened before and the mythology we know of now was in fact a reality of a time we don’t remember and don’t want to believe.
