{"id":153506,"date":"2025-01-05T13:49:21","date_gmt":"2025-01-05T13:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/culture\/rewrite-this-title-in-arabic-architects-design-community-solutions-for-combatting-climate-disaster\/"},"modified":"2025-01-05T13:49:23","modified_gmt":"2025-01-05T13:49:23","slug":"rewrite-this-title-in-arabic-architects-design-community-solutions-for-combatting-climate-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/culture\/rewrite-this-title-in-arabic-architects-design-community-solutions-for-combatting-climate-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"rewrite this title in Arabic Architects design community solutions for combatting climate disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic By Jessica Rawnsley, Financial TimesAs another year punctuated by climate catastrophe draws to a close, densely-packed urban communities \u2013 from favelas in Brazil to slums on the outskirts of Mexico City \u2013 have again found themselves on the sharp end of extreme weather. So-called informal communities are often situated in undesirable, disaster-prone areas \u2013 such as low-lying flood plains that lack the infrastructure to drain off excess water. Despite this, more often than not, they are excluded from government-instigated adaptation plans and overlooked in climate funds.But a number of pioneering architecture firms are now attempting to grapple with these interlinked challenges within vulnerable communities across the Global South.Their work cannot come too soon. According to UN estimates, one in four city dwellers \u2013 more than a billion people \u2013 live in precarious conditions without access to basic services or adequate housing. On top of that, the IPCC\u2019s latest Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report has found that economically and socially marginalised residents living in urban \u2018informal settlements\u2019 bear the brunt of climate change. For many of these communities, the ravages of global warming are not a distance away on the horizon but in the here and now \u2014 and the task is how best to prepare them to withstand it.Decades of research have already established that social infrastructure \u2014 such as public swimming pools, sport centres and libraries \u2014 can be critical in fostering community cohesion and resilience, which can directly impact how people fare in a disaster. For example, sociologist Eric Klinenberg highlights the value of this infrastructure to community wellbeing in his 2018 book Palaces for the People, and illustrates how the absence of it causes excess deaths during natural disasters, such as heat waves.Several architects have begun to explore community-led solutions to these localised problems \u2014 signifying a novel way of approaching architecture in a rapidly warming world.Their structures are disparate, rooted in specific contexts and communities, but all share a unifying thread: buildings that boost both social and ecological resilience, tackling the intertwined issues of inequality, urban poverty, and climate adaptation.\u201cWe need to shift to architecture as a practice of listening,\u201d argues Catalina Mejia Moreno, a senior lecturer in climate studies at Central Saint Martins. She has developed an open curriculum that explores the interconnectedness of social justice and climate justice, and the way architects can engage with the worst-affected communities.\u201cWe think architecture is a solutions-based discipline that can arrive anywhere and offer a blanket solution,\u201d she says. What is needed, according to Meija Moreno, are designs that address the root causes and consequences of climate breakdown, and nurture the rebuilding of social and ecological systems.Stefano Romagnoli, co-founder of Argentina-based Region Austral, takes a similar view.\u201cWe can be part of the solution to climate change but we need to rethink the way we use the discipline, not in traditional top-down, client-architect relationships, but a more horizontal way of thinking and designing alongside people,\u201d he says.That idea forms the spine of a project underway in a vulnerable settlement in Buenos Aires \u201cthat empowers local residents to drive the creation of resilient public spaces within the neighbourhood\u201d. Four community spaces \u2013 designed through participatory workshops \u2013 will simultaneously improve climate resilience and create communal areas.A sports centre, for example, built in a disused space that had become a place for selling drugs, utilises green infrastructure to act also as a rain garden to mitigate flooding.Palpa Sports Court &#8211; Credit-Region Austral\u201cAs in many other informal settlements in Latin America, there is a huge problem with a scarcity of public spaces, trees and rain filtration areas that make the neighbourhood highly vulnerable to climate change,\u201d explains Region Austral co-founder Soledad Patino. \u201cWe tackled both public space and green infrastructure to improve the neighbourhood and make it more adapted to climate effects in the future.\u201dUrban design studio Taller Capital addresses flooding in neglected urban communities in Mexico with designs created in tandem with communities \u2014 and unique to each location.Founder Loreta Castro Reguera stresses the importance of addressing climate change and community issues simultaneously \u2013 otherwise governments will opt to funnel money toward immediate economic concerns that seem more pressing than future-proofing.\u201cFor vulnerable communities that are being impacted by climate change and a host of other issues, you need to think about architecture that is effective, but that also improves life quality,\u201d Reguera explains. \u201cNow, everyone is teaching that architecture needs to be climate sensitive, but it needs to be socially accurate too.\u201dFor a community in Mexico City blighted by flooding, that meant building a water management structure to funnel rain into a natural public pool, before cascading it down tiered gardens and into aquaculture ponds. Alongside a flood defence, the structure acts as a community center replete with changing rooms, toilets, a kitchen space and a car park.Containing the flood &#8211; Colosio embankment; Credit: Taller CapitalNon-profit design studio Arquitetura na Periferia addresses the need for sustainable housing and gender inequality among impoverished communities in Brazil by teaching groups of women how to build and improve their own homes. The predominantly single mothers develop a sense of autonomy and a louder voice within their communities. They go on to renovate other houses, too. And, as each year brings more violent rains, the women find themselves better equipped to fortify their homes.But the ramifications run wider and deeper, says founder Carina Guedes. \u201cThey create this network of support between them,\u201d she explains. \u201cAnd they start projects within the community \u2013 one woman started a project to support women that have experienced violence, another started a community garden. And they start to stand up for their rights.\u201dGuedes adds: \u201cWhen you\u2019re doing architecture with people that live within the communities, it\u2019s a transformation that really, really goes way beyond that space. It changes the whole chain of social relations. Once we strengthen this sense of community, we strengthen care for the home, for public spaces, for the environment. We don\u2019t see ourselves as owners of the project, we\u2019re doing it together. The community is the owner of the space.\u201dBefore house improvement; Credit: IAAfter house improvement; Credit: IAIt is a significant shift away from conventional, top-down design \u2013 where an architect zooms into an area to implement their idea and then departs \u2013 and moves beyond the often siloed ways of approaching sustainability. Projects begin with listening to a community\u2019s specific needs; designs address interconnected social and environmental issues; community engagement defines conception through to long-term management.There are inherent challenges to the approach, such as needing approval from hundreds of members of a community. And, as projects like these are excluded from most global climate adaptation funds and government initiatives, they must rely on grants from organisations such as re:arc \u2014 a philanthropic institute with a focus on innovative, holistic community-led solutions at the intersection of climate and architecture.Mitigation projects tend to receive the lion\u2019s share of climate funding \u2013 a mere 1.2 per cent of climate finance for cities is spent on adaptation. But, as extreme weather intensifies, adaptation will become increasingly important. In the built world, architecture that forges strong, resilient communities will play a pivotal role.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic By Jessica Rawnsley, Financial TimesAs another year punctuated by climate catastrophe draws to a close, densely-packed urban communities \u2013 from favelas in Brazil to slums on the outskirts of Mexico City \u2013 have again found themselves on the sharp end of extreme weather. So-called<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-153506","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153506"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153508,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153506\/revisions\/153508"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}