Rumble: ArcDR3 Studios "Fire City" and "Fire Land" Review 2021

Rumble: ArcDR3 Studios “Fire City” and “Fire Land” Review 2021

Edited Edge: Redesigning WUI by Bella Rosa and Amy Robles

This year Rumble Event framed a unique occasion when students from parallel studios: Fire City: Towards Regenerative Urbanism with Hitoshi Abe (M.Arch. Research Studio) and Fire LA-ND with Jeffrey Inaba and David Jimenez Iniesta (M.S.AUD Research Studio) showcased their works to the guests of the event. During the event, A.UD faculty and students engage the broader architecture and urban design discussions about the future of design and the built environment under the conditions of changing environment.

Studio Description:

In recent years, Los Angeles Metropolitan Region – a place naturally predisposed for wildfire activity with its abundance of dry fuels in chaparral and woodland ecosystems, hot and dry Mediterranean climate, and rugged topography in and around the region’s multiple mountain ranges – has seen a dramatic increase in Wildfire intensity and frequency. These changing environmental conditions pose an urgency of addressing this Wildfire risk by encouraging the reframing of conventional urban design and planning techniques through contemporary models more dynamic, more elastic, and more faceted than conventional static plan-based ones.

To address the question of fire-risk reduction and fire-resilience in California across a range of perspectives, UCLA AUD runs two parallel studios on Architecture and Urban Design for Risk Reduction and Resilience on two campuses at UCLA – FireCity Research Studio at Perloff Hall and FireLand Research Studio at IDEAS. FireCity and FireLand Studios at UCLA are part of the larger 3-year ArcDR3 (Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience) Initiative – a 3-year global interdisciplinary architecture education project organized by xLAB at UCLA, IRIDes at Tohoku University in Sendai, and Miraikan National Museum for Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo. With the key objective of addressing the theme of “Regenerative Urbanism” and its implications for architecture and urban design, 11 participating Universities ( UC Berkeley (USA), University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong), University of Melbourne (Australia), National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), National University of Singapore (Singapore), Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Chile), University of Tokyo (Japan), Tohoku University (Japan), Tsinghua University (China), University of Washington (USA) and UCLA (USA) are working on their context-specific design studios, developed for the 2020-2021 academic year.

With its twin focus on fire-risk-reduction and fire-resilience, the joint studios draw from a diverse network of educational partners and researchers. Throughout the year, FireCity and FireLand studios accommodated presentations from fire-related, city planning, and urban design experts in local regeneration efforts, architects, and researchers. Students in parallel studios are developing diverse proposals based on shared findings. Because architecture yields insights through both research and design, the studios are organized to take the best advantage of both modalities of exploration – Research Studio and Suprastudio formats. The parallel structure is intended to share AUD’s cross-campus intelligence through a feedback loop of collaboration and dialogue among the students and across the globe with other ArcDR3 participants.

Studio work will result in producing a culminating research publication that will feature the findings and results of the year-long studios at A.UD UCLA and will share project research of pre-fire prevention and post-fire recovery planning, as well as offer new ways of thinking about urban design responses to the fire by using architecture as a sustainable medium for city building.

Joint Review Session “Camp Fire” hosted discussions with the following jurors: Tei Carpenter, Christopher Hawthorne, Ken Tadashi Oshima, Ron Rael, Dana Cuff, and Mohamed Sharif
Joint Review Session “Woolsey Fire” hosted discussions with the following jurors: Jing Liu, Kai Uwe Bergmann, Aaron Gross, Greg Lynn, and Mariana Ibanez
Joint Review Session “Tubbs Fire” hosted discussions with the following jurors: Don Bates, Sara Ichioka, Mark Lee, Helen Kongsgaard, Brett Steele, and Neil Denari

To view FireCity / FireLand Rumble Miro Board please follow the link.

This year Rumble Event framed a unique occasion when students from parallel studios: Fire City: Towards Regenerative Urbanism with Hitoshi Abe (M.Arch. Research Studio) and Fire LA-ND with Jeffrey Inaba and David Jimenez Iniesta (M.S.AUD Research Studio) showcased their works to the guests of the event. During the event, A.UD faculty and students engage the broader architecture and urban design discussions about the future of design and the built environment under the conditions of changing environment. With its twin focus on fire-risk-reduction and fire-resilience, the joint studios draw from a diverse network of educational partners and researchers. Throughout the year, FireCity and FireLand studios accommodated presentations from fire-related, city planning, and urban design experts in local regeneration efforts, architects, and researchers. Students in parallel studios are developing diverse proposals based on shared findings. Because architecture yields insights through both research and design, the studios are organized to take the best advantage of both modalities of exploration – Research Studio and Suprastudio formats. The parallel structure is intended to share AUD’s cross-campus intelligence through a feedback loop of collaboration and dialogue among the students and across the globe with other ArcDR3 participants.