Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic increase in catastrophic wildfires — fires that have destroyed entire towns, scorched millions of forested acres, and blanketed whole continents with plumes of smoke. Experts warn that, due to climate change and rapid urbanization in wildfire-prone areas, we’ve entered a new era of perennial megafires that will only become more destructive and dangerous as time goes on. As communities prepare for future wildfires or grapple with the challenges of rebuilding in the wake of these traumatic events, architects will need to respond with scientifically informed, ecologically integrative design strategies. Playbook for the Pyrocene is a 119-page printed booklet and digital publication that builds off several years of research into fire-adaptive design and synthesizes key concepts from ecology, fire science, forestry, environmental policy, emergency management, and indigenous stewardship. The booklet is intended explicitly for architects and landscape architects broadly familiar with ecological principles and landscape systems, but without an advanced background in fire science, policy, or other specialized knowledge per se. Each of the book’s six rules-of-thumb and twenty applied strategies for reducing wildfire risk offer technical guidance alongside anecdotes and insights from those with first-hand wildfire experience and expertise. Each spread provides practitioners with transferable, evidence-based information through concise language and straightforward illustrations. Each of the strategies presented in the Playbook can be applied to a wide range of site conditions, scales, and geographical contexts. An appendix serves as a comprehensive repository of over 100 additional resources, guidelines, best practices, and published research keyed to each individual strategy.
Timely and necessary, this project is a resilience resource in urban design with strategies addressing fire in communities, including education, practical advice, and recommended concrete actions. It addresses the complexity of the issues in a graphically clear way for both laymen and professionals.
– 2024 Urban Design Awards Jury