ARCHIDES Lecture Tripoli

Crisis? What Crisis?

The destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this reason, he sees ways everywhere.
—Walter Benjamin

The world is currently experiencing that a crisis, once declared, can become the most powerful catalyst for change. Urgency triggers action at a speed and scale otherwise inconceivable.

Japan’s history of relentlessly recurring disasters has made the embracing of the opportunities every crisis brings both necessary and innate. Instability has become a fertile ground for the new, impermanence a strategy, diversity an ongoing outcome.

Weaving connections between destruction and adaptation, continuity and resilience, the lecture explores the potential for architecture in the context of crises.

Perhaps the most effective response is an architecture where adventure is not stifled but set free.

Postscript:
Perfectly fitting the title, the travel restrictions caused by the pandemic meant that the lecture was held online.