The new Waterbury Municipal Center (completed in 2016) narrowly escaped flooding in July 2023. After flooding from 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene destroyed the former town office building, siting the new building further out of the flood plain was a key design decision.
Focusing on Resilience – VIA’s 2024 Retreat
Altoids tins. Human ingenuity. Strong communities. Nature, specifically estuaries, fire ants, mycorrhizal networks. These were a few of the shared examples of resilience that kickstarted our annual retreat in mid-November. As natural disasters, health crises, and social division and conflict dominate the current headlines, VIA spent the day discussing our role as architects in helping increase resilience for our clients, our communities, and our planet.
We are facing extraordinary challenges (a global pandemic, historic flooding, wildfires). While people may disagree on their root causes, we all strive for resilience in the face of them. In light of that realization, focusing on “resilience” when advocating for sustainability in our design work may be a fruitful path to common ground across political, class, and income divides.
Our afternoon discussions focused on several key areas:
- Designing for resilience –
- Get mechanicals out of potential flood zones (i.e. basements)
- Are basements then simply costly storage areas? What might be the alternative?
- Seek inspiration from pre-fossil fuel building strategies and typologies.
- Reuniting people with natural systems
- Consider putting waste to work
- Limiting human disruption of natural systems
- Human infrastructure as a beneficial part of an ecosystem (food source, habitat, energy source)
- Buildings as living organisms with inputs and outputs – breath, water, waste
- Housing as a critical component of strong, resilient communities
- Work to provide a variety of housing types for variety of income levels and demographics in mixed communities
- Rethink the isolated, single-family home
- Consider more sharing of systems, resources, homes (i.e. single bedrooms with shared kitchens and living areas for traveling nurses, students, young professionals, elders needing live-in help)
Spending a day focusing on big ideas like resilience helps guide our process going forward. As architects whose concern for people and the environment is paramount to our work, we are deeply interested in contributing to a healthier, more resilient future for everyone. We look forward to exploring this idea further over the next year and beyond for as long as it takes!
