SPACE June 2025 (No. 691)
Home-for-All in Heita, designed by Riken Yamamoto. The Home-for-All is a small-scale public architecture project initiated after the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011) by Riken Yamamoto, Sejima Kazuyo, and Ito Toyo. Created in 16 locations across the disaster area, the project aimed to support community recovery through shared spaces for gatherings, children, and the rebuilding of agricultural and fishing livelihoods. / ©Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop
What happens to the lives of disaster survivors after a crisis? This question was posed at a recent forum by Listen to the City (director, Park Eunseon), Yamamoto Riken (principal, Riken Yamamoto & Field Shop), and After Estudio (co-principals, Julia Cano, Helena Jimenez, Sean Hussey, Jose Quereda). While some architects have contributed to the design of emergency shelters, these efforts often only address the immediate aftermath of catastrophe. As time passes, survivors face the challenge of either returning to their original homes and communities or rebuilding their lives from scratch in entirely new environments. It is in confronting these realities that architecture can begin to offer meaningful pathways to recovery.
A village lost to the Cheongsong Wildfire (2025) / ©Park Eunseon
As the frequency and severity of disasters driven by global warming and extreme weather events continue to rise worldwide, ▼1 the importance of urban planners and architects in creating communities capable of withstanding future disasters has become crucial. However, due to a lack of direct involvement in post-disaster recovery process, their imaginative powers are often limited. Against this backdrop, an art, architecture, and urban collective Listen to the City (director, Park Eunseon), organised a conversation between architects who have actively engaged in disaster recovery, sharing ideas and experiences.
The online forum ‘Disaster, Architecture, and Community’, held via Zoom on the 15th of April, featured presentations by the author – who s...
Since 2009, she has led Listen to the City, an art, architecture, and urban collective. She continues to work on research topics such as temporary disaster shelters, evacuation centres, and disaster communication.