{"id":14269,"date":"2016-04-30T10:22:18","date_gmt":"2016-04-30T14:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/?p=14269"},"modified":"2025-08-09T12:14:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-09T16:14:11","slug":"visions-of-resilience-eighteen-artists-say-or-show-something-in-response-to-the-word-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/2016\/04\/30\/visions-of-resilience-eighteen-artists-say-or-show-something-in-response-to-the-word-resilience\/","title":{"rendered":"Visions of resilience: Eighteen artists say or show something in response to the word “resilience”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Authors in This Roundtable<\/h3>\n
Juan Carlos Arroyo, Bogot\u00e1<\/a> What survives in the act of resistance to a hospital closure is an ideal of human care, a concept of health and selfless humanitarianism that seems extinguished with the progress of economic models.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Katrine Claassens, Cape Town<\/a> Resilience is a word often understood in terms of strength; in the Anthropocene, however, we would do well to understand resilience in terms of fragility.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
David Brooks, New York<\/a> To sincerely give consideration to the idea of resilience, in a culturally inclusive way, it is the notion of adaptability that floats to the top and becomes the road map to understanding.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Rebecca Chesney, Preston<\/a> “Resilience” is\u00a0not located in a place of simple, black and white contrasts, but a complicated tapestry intricately woven.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Emilio Fantin, Bologna<\/a> Resilience is a form of coexistence. It is a process, a form of living, a relation to nature.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Ganzeer, Los Angeles<\/a> The Egyptian cat’s\u00a0ability to survive great changes is a testament to the animal\u2019s resilience.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Lloyd Godman, Melbourne<\/a> In an environment of predicted rapid climate change due to high CO2<\/sub> levels, Tillandsias, offer a bio-model for effective adaption.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Fran Ilich, New York<\/a> Today, we find many aspects of indigenous cultures becoming resilient by escaping Hispanic-Latino control.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Todd Lanier Lester, S\u00e3o Paulo<\/a> \u201cResilience\u201d is just another hoo-ha word game that philanthrocapitalism baits do-gooders with,\u00a0\u00e0 la<\/em>\u00a0new grant competitions.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Frida Larios, Washington<\/a> What could the consciousness of co-creation and co-evolution look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, and taste like in action?<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Patrick Lydon, San Jose & Seoul<\/a> The roots of true resilience are in knowing our connectedness to nature, and then acting in the light of this knowledge. <\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Mary Mattingly, New York<\/a> Resilience is a temporary fix, and has often been a way to leave the larger questions unanswered and problems unaddressed.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
E. J. McAdams, New York<\/a> What happens if you exchange every variation of the word \u201csystem\u201d with variations of the word \u201cpoem\u201d?<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Mary Miss, New York<\/a> We intend to provoke the visitors\u2019 curiosity and send them out to the nearby waterways.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Edna Peres, Johannesburg<\/a> Resilience suggests a fundamental reevaluation of our value systems, our interaction with city decision-makers, and our relationships.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Caroline Robinson, Auckland<\/a> What could the consciousness of co-creation and co-evolution look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, and taste like in action?<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Finzi Saidi, Pretoria<\/a> Resilience suggests a fundamental reevaluation of our value systems, our interaction with city decision-makers, and our relationships.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n
Keijiro Suzuki, Yamaguchi & Nagoya<\/a> My vision of resilience accommodates perspective shift and interdependency.<\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
David Maddox<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n David Maddox<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

David loves urban spaces and nature. He loves creativity and collaboration. He loves theatre and music. In his life and work he has practiced in all of these as, in various moments, a scientist, a climate change researcher, a land steward, an ecological practitioner, composer, a playwright, a musician, an actor, and a theatre director. David's dad told him once that he needed a back up plan, something to \"fall back on\". So he bought a tuba.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Introduction<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n

Resilience.<\/p>\n

Resilient.<\/p>\n

It is is the word of the decade.<\/p>\n

As sustainability was before it.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0challenge with both words, directed at us, and especially as they relate to specific ideas and actions, is this.\u00a0While they exist so well in the realm of metaphor, they are more difficult in reality. The same can be said for “livability” and “justice”. “Sustainability”.<\/p>\n

But let’s embrace thinking in a different way.<\/p>\n

Let’s strike out in possibly new metaphorical directions.<\/p>\n

In this roundtable, we invited 18\u00a0artists and designers of various types to respond\u2014in words, images, or other works\u2014to the word.<\/p>\n

Resilience.<\/p>\n

This Roundtable is a co-production with Arts Everywhere<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\n
Rebecca Chesney<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Rebecca Chesney<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Rebecca Chesney is a visual artist whose work is concerned with the relationship between humans and nature and how we perceive, romanticize, and translate the landscape.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Rebecca Chesney<\/h3>\n

Preston to Mumbai (and back)<\/strong><\/p>\n

My work as a visual artist is concerned with the relationship between humans and nature: how we perceive, romanticize, and translate the landscape, and how politics, ownership, management, and commercial value all influence our surroundings.<\/p>\n

If a balance is to be found where humans and wildlife coexist, we must acknowledge how each situation and circumstance demands a different solution.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

I live in Preston in the U.K. and observing nature within the city has inevitably fed into my work and influenced my ideas. With the urban environment constantly changing, through periods of expansion and development, or recession, decline, and neglect I\u2019ve become attracted to noting the resilience of some species.<\/p>\n

\"Chesney
Installation view of Unwanted<\/i>, PAD Gallery Preston. Photo: Rebecca Chesney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2006, I conducted surveys in Preston to try and discover all the \u2018weed\u2019 species in the city (only species that were unplanned and not deliberately planted on landscaped areas were included in the count). I documented over 50 species in gaps in the pavement, gutters, rooftops, chimneys and on small plots of derelict land. The list includes native, archaeophyte, and neophyte species.<\/p>\n

Some can be described as resilient, others as opportunistic invaders, but they\u2019re all surviving in what is seen as an unnatural habitat. Thriving along damp walls and beside leaky drainpipes were some wonderful examples of native ferns: Black Spleenwort, Maidenhair Spleenwort, Wall-Rue, Hartstongue and Male Fern, for example.<\/p>\n

Given that Preston is included in the Doomsday Book of 1086, the earliest surviving public record of the land held by William the Conqueror, it is intriguing to wonder if these species have been here since before that time, and how they have adapted to the challenges posed by an ever changing \u2018habitat\u2019.<\/p>\n

Expanding the project further brought the publication, in 2012, of Natura in Minima Maxima: A Map of the Famous City of Preston, Proud Host to Plants of All Nations<\/em>. I have continued to record plants in Preston; this hand drawn map reveals some of the 70 species documented since the project started in 2006.<\/p>\n

\"Chesney
Natura in Minima Maxima<\/i>. Hand drawn map showing some of the weeds of Preston. Image: Rebecca Chesney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was while on a Gasworks International Fellowship in Mumbai in 2013, where I was researching the relationship between humans and nature in and around the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, that I was confronted with a situation where both humans and nature are competing for the same space and where each is surviving because of their resilience in the face of continual pressure.<\/p>\n

The park, 104km2<\/sup> of native southern moist deciduous forest, is home to many rare species of plant and animals, including leopards. However, it is almost entirely surrounded by a massive urban population of approximately 20,000 people per km2<\/sup> (it has been estimated that the population in Mumbai’s metropolitan area in 2013 was more than 20.5 million). During the 1990s, the High Court in Mumbai ruled that, because of the intense pressure on the ecology of the Park from the ever increasing population, all humans should be evicted from the Park. It was estimated that nearly 460,000 people lived in the Park by the mid-90s, but this number included both tribal villagers who had lived in the Park for generations and thousands of illegal encroachers living in self-made shanties.<\/p>\n

\"Chesney
Tribal village in the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Mumbai, India. Photo: Rebecca Chesney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The problems and conflict triggered from this ruling still resonate today. The land is subject to environmental, political, commercial, and humanitarian issues involving the interests of local authorities, environmentalists, politicians, builders, and land mafia, as well as the thousands of people who still live within the Park boundary.<\/p>\n

Relying on the Park for shelter, fuel, and food, the illegal encroachers are some of the poorest in society, with few or no rights, making them very vulnerable. And it\u2019s the plentiful stray dogs associated with these human settlements that have become easy prey for leopards, constituting almost 70 percent of their diet. However, there have been attacks on people living in and around the Park boundary, causing terrible injuries and a number of deaths. Living under the threat of attack from leopards and the threat of eviction from their homes, these communities reveal a resilience and determination to remain. But the authorities in Mumbai are equally determined to protect the wildlife of the Park from the pressure of creeping development, knowing that this unique and incredible habitat could be lost forever if action is not taken.<\/p>\n

\"Chesney
Stray Dog of Mumbai<\/i> (from a series of 18). Drawing on paper. Image: Rebecca Chesney<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Living on the boundary of the Park during my stay in Mumbai taught me how complex the situation is\u2014it is not a place of simple, black and white contrasts, but a complicated tapestry intricately woven. Bringing this incredible experience back to the city where I live has given me a new perspective from which to view my surroundings and to consider that, if a balance is to be found where humans and wildlife coexist, we must acknowledge how each situation and circumstance demands a different solution.
\n<\/div>

\n
Emilio Fantin<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Emilio Fantin<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Emilio Fantin is an artist working in Italy on multidisciplinary research.\r\nHe teaches at the Politecnico, Architecture, University of Milan, and acts as coordinator of the \u201cOsservatorio Public Art\u201d.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Emilio Fantin<\/h3>\n

The term resilience suggests a spirit of adaptation, the ability to solve problems, a rebound. As a strategy to improve a problem, resilience transforms the deteriorated situation by holding to it.<\/p>\n

Resilience is a form of coexistence. It is a process, a form of living, a relation to nature.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

To me, revolution suggests an image of utopia, pureness and sacrifice, the drive towards a new world. I see revolution as a primary color, red. It has an impetuous movement, like a red river that becomes a stormy sea. Revolution attacks and destroys the opponent. It dictates a new winner by a clear cut. This is a great strength and a great weakness.<\/p>\n

\u201cA revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Mao Tse-Tung<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Resilience drives us to the realm of adaptation. It speaks of transformation and not destruction. I imagine that resilience has a shade of Terra di Siena (Sienna), a complementary color. I used to paint with it in order to give different nuances. Terra di Siena has a less solid quality than red because it is more adaptable. Resilience is the flow of the river that does not converge into a sea. It flows into different channels, gathering enough force to overcome obstacles.<\/p>\n

Phonetically speaking, in the word revolution, the combination of \u201cr\u201d and \u201cv\u201d sounds sharp and hard. In the word resilience, the combination of “r\u201d and “s” sounds sweet and fluid.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.thenatureofcities.com\/TNOC\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/emilio-fantin-Wi-Fi.m4v<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n

Resilience sounds\u00a0sensual and maternal, while revolution sounds imperative and manly. Revolution evokes the orbital movement of planets, Father and Sky. Resilience echoes nature, Mother and Earth. In the 60s, we had the sexual revolution; nowadays we have a gender resilience. The metamorphosis of the bodies is an example of a resilient quality. Terms like trans, inter, intra, with, between<\/em>, refer to a processuality. \u00a0Resilience leaves the door always open, while revolution is categoric and it stops a cycle. The resilient attitude of changing and transforming is acting in the generative and reproductive functions, which are the essence of feminine.<\/p>\n

Resilience is a form of coexistence. It is a process, a form of living, a relation to nature. It drives us toward a profound interest in ecology and politics. From a political perspective, it can be seen as an attitude to resist and to escape power abuse. It is a strategy to escape strong power, slipping through it without making another enemy and creating an equally strong opponent. Resilience fights the enemy by keeping it to the background, but cannot really destroy it. This is a great strength and a great weakness.<\/p>\n

But is it possible to find solutions to the problems of the environment without questioning the values of capitalism? This perspective lets us hope for a better future, but exposes us to the danger of slipping into accepting neoliberal principles as given.<\/p>\n

\u201cStop calling me resilient. I\u2019m not resilient. Because every time you say, \u2018Oh, they\u2019re resilient,\u2019 you can do something else to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Tracie Washington, New Orleans-based civil rights attorney, 2010<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>

\n
\n
\n
Frida Larios<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Frida Larios<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Frida Larios [b. San Jos\u00e9, Costa Rica, 1974 (of Salvadoran parents)] has been leading learning since 2000, following her higher purpose of facilitating interpretative visual narrative applied to authored books, artworks, garments, workshops, and dialogues with children, youth, and designers, bridging the stories from Indigenous peoples and lands to contemporary reflection and appreciation, through her award-winning New Maya (Visual) Language coding methodology.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
Caroline Robinson<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Caroline Robinson<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Caroline Robinson is the Founder and Director of Cabal<\/a>, a pioneering arts, design, and facilitation practice based in Auckland, New Zealand.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n

Frida Larios and Caroline Robinson<\/h3>\n

Cultivating our seed potential<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our footsteps keep warm an ancient lineage of birth, life, death and rebirth. As artists, it is this deep memory that we seek to activate and regenerate.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cResilience\u201d can only ever be a state of being, the state of oneness within the laws of nature. <\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

Human creativity is woven within life\u2019s continual evolution. Air, water, light, earth, fungi, plants, trees, insects, animals: these are our ancestors, here long before we were. Essential to who we are now. This primordial progression of child, within mother, within child, within mother, over eons of time, sustains and revitalises our true human nature.<\/p>\n

With hands and hearts, our human family have crafted expressions of this awareness, recorded in rock, clay, pigment, fibre, song, and dance, to nourish the connections over time, making the journey of our continuity tangible. There is no separation. Everything and every one of us is interconnected. This is the indigenous understanding, and this reality is indigenous to us all.<\/p>\n

\"Wholeness-Luna-Collage-2\"
Wholeness. Images: Frida Larios and Caroline Robinson<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In this understanding, \u201cresilience\u201d can only ever be a state of being, the state of oneness within the laws of nature. The gift is nestled in the remembering this infinite wholeness that we are. The scientific reality is our biology and the patterns of the universe are regenerative. We are darkness and light. Harmonising. Potent. Timeless.<\/p>\n

When we see it this way, it frames disturbance and disruption as vital polarity in the battery of life. Like the volcano decimating a landscape, to regenerate fertility on the earth\u2019s surface. Within the darkness, a seed potential is waiting for full expression.<\/p>\n

Can we find our true power and strength deep within the chaos, danger, and vulnerability?<\/em><\/p>\n

The paradox lies in the face of extreme complexity and challenge: we are being called to be receptive and sensitive to the whispers of life. In a whole living system reality, we are nature, and nature sees only fuel, opportunity, and potential. Everyone and everything is part of this epic transformational process. We are actually co-evolving.<\/p>\n

What could the consciousness of co-creation and co-evolution look like, feel like, sound like, smell like, and taste like in action?<\/p>\n

We are living research. We are practitioners. We are seeds. As such, the work we do carries the intention to discover and cultivate life\u2019s simple regenerative principle. Our relationships and endeavours, personal and collective, large and small, become centres of research and practice that guide us back to the source for renewal.<\/p>\n

So we ask:<\/p>\n

Where do I feel the most alive, and connected to life\u2019s potential?<\/em>
\nHow am I keeping warm this ancient footprint of regeneration?<\/em><\/p>\n

In this tenuous time of transition, at times awkward and intensely painful, perhaps the most pragmatic, yet sacred, action, is to focus human creativity on expressing, in myriad ways, the dignity of our wholeness.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Todd Lester<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Todd Lester<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Todd Lester is an artist and cultural producer. He has worked in leadership, advocacy and strategic planning roles at Global Arts Corps, Reporters sans frontiers, and Astraea Lesbian Justice Foundation. He founded freeDimensional and Lanchonete.org\u2014a new project focused on daily life in the center of S\u00e3o Paulo. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Todd Lanier Lester<\/h3>\n

It is hard for me to speak to one coded buzzword\u2014resilience\u2014without evoking another: precarity (see this dense, yet compelling article, From Precarity to Precariousness and Back Again: Labour, Life and Unstable Networks<\/a>). That it\u2019s rooted, significantly, in Italian labor struggles might explain why it doesn\u2019t spellcheck in English. While neither word originates in the art world, both \u2018precarity\u2019 and \u2018resilience\u2019 have entered its stratosphere significantly in the past decade. They feel like jargon when passing the lips, and therefore attain new levels of encryption for those of us who know how to deploy them in symposia and panel settings \u2026 etymologically, they \u201cmean\u201d something, yet often it\u2019s hard to indict users for blurred, vague, or conflated issuance. The \u201cword police\u201d are on their trail, however, and this question(ing) may well be a preliminary hearing.<\/p>\n

\u201cResilience\u201d is just another hoo-ha word game that philanthrocapitalism baits do-gooders with \u00e0 la<\/em> new grant competitions.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

I recently saw the programme of a university conference that included a Roundtable on Precarity<\/em>. I thought to myself, what a sign of the neoliberal times \u2026 historicizing an acceptable version of \u2018down and out\u2019 as it climbs up the class ladder \u2026 as if the privilege of overworking hails from a different system than one that does not allow some to work with dignity (or that labor abuse in a gilded vocation is somehow more egregious than that experienced by workers writ large).<\/p>\n

Cities fascinate me. They comprise communities, and my art is almost always in dialogue with various forms of community organizing. I often work in rather large cities like Cairo and S\u00e3o Paulo, where the word in question is beginning to be bandied about, as it has been in pan-Western locales for some years now. Here, I\u2019m bringing up the usage of such English-language jargon in non-English-speaking locales \u2026 a related and also fraught \u2018enterprise\u2019. Working in these large\u2014refugee, economic migrant, natural disaster \/ climate change migrant, exile, asylum-seeker -receiving\u2014cities, I\u2019ve come to believe that the size of a city is a form of control. For example the mega-city phenomenon is not occurring in the pan-Western territory. Our \u201cresilient\u201d cities cannot even be compared to those for which the global visa regime directs immense flows of human mobility to be \u201cheld\u201d and processed with only a small fraction traveling onward to the cities of the \u201cWest\u201d. Our cities (speaking as a U.S. citizen) are simply not challenged in the same way that those in formerly\/currently colonized or clientele states are\u2026 full disclosure: I\u2019m sitting in Cairo as I finish this piece.<\/p>\n

So, really, \u201cresilience\u201d is just another hoo-ha word game that philanthrocapitalism baits do-gooders with \u00e0 la<\/em> new grant competitions, as Tom Slater points out in The resilience of neoliberal urbanism<\/a> (OpenDemocracy, 28 January 2014). And in From Just Another Emperor? The Myths and Realities of Philanthrocapitalism<\/a>, where Michael Edwards cautions that the phenomenon (described by Slater) “is flawed in both its proposed means and its promised ends [seeing] business methods as the answer to social problems, but [offering] little rigorous evidence or analysis to support this claim \u2026 Philanthrocapitalism is in danger of passing itself off as the whole solution, downgrading the costs and trade-offs of extending business and market principles into social transformation.” Slater (OpenDemocracy) suggests that “an entire cottage industry on \u2018resilient cities\u2019 has emerged at a time of global austerity (a needless and wicked political and corporate assault on the poor that needs to be captured as a crisis per se, rather than as a response to an economic crisis)\u2026 [and that the] insidious work of urban resilience lies in the obvious and, to its proponents, entirely logical policy suggestion that the word carries: urban dwellers of the world, brace yourselves for austerity [or environmental catastrophe] and everything will be fine in the end!”<\/em><\/p>\n

And, by the way, I\u2019m not excluding myself from the \u201cdo good\u201d camp, but I do think it helps to interrogate the conditions under which we strive for social justice \u2026 and questioning such positivist narratives offers one access hatch to go deeper and reality-check if what we hope for\/from (in using these words) attains depth and rigor in a struggle for equality that is definitely implied when resilience-speak and social justice collide (often in the very halls of those philanthropies). I imagine that some would even disagree that \u201cresilience\u201d is positivist, but we can save that for the comments section. A couple years ago, I was in a room full of grantmakers and philanthropists in which the question was asked: \u201cHow can we make sure that artists are as responsive to future natural disasters [as they were to Hurricane Sandy and the Calgary flooding]?\u201d Art is as social as it has always been. Artists\u2019 ideas are as vibrant as they have always been. However, to only pay attention to their societal function when the shit hits the fan is to miss the point. So, thank you for asking this question to a gaggle of artists \u2026 it means a lot.<\/p>\n

Hey, folks, as an independent project maker, I retain the right to apply for \u201cresilience\u201d-themed funds for my art work\u2014as my need to do so reflects the capitalist system I exist within\u2014even if I also aspire for that work to ask difficult questions of what Andy Merrifield terms<\/a> the \u201cbourgeois appropriation\u201d of Right to the City discourse. In fact, as a middle class, white male who cares deeply about the future of our cities, I believe it is my responsibility to question the role of dominant culture in perpetuating neoliberal myths (of opportunity) in the face of what Lefebvre termed \u201cplanetary metamorphosis\u201d in his ultimate work, \u201cDissolving City, Planetary Metamorphosis\u201d, a short essay in which the old Marxist fully relinquished Right to the City-speak to the \u201cenemies\u201d. While it might seem like a tangent, I suggest a broad reading of Sarah Schulman\u2019s The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination<\/a> with the question of \u201cresilience\u201d in mind. Thanks for reading!
\n<\/div>

\n
\n
\n
Edna Peres<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Edna Peres<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Dr. Edna Peres has a background in architecture, urbanism, writing, and academia. Her experience includes regenerative design, urban resilience thinking, transit-oriented design, sustainability, low\/medium\/high-end housing settlements, adaptive reuse, inner city development, as well as ecological urbanism.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

\n
Finzi Saidi<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Finzi Saidi<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Dr. Finzi Saidi joined the Department of Architecture in the faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at University of Johannesburg in 2008. His research interests include studies of open space in informal settlements and townships in South Africa, exploring innercity schools and urban open space, and innovative curriculum development.<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n<\/div>\n

Edna Peres and Finzi Saidi<\/h3>\n

Although there are notions that resilience is a new buzzword<\/em> following on from sustainability, resilience is not a new thing. If we observe the exchanges<\/em> between plants and animals, and their environments, we are witnessing resilience in action. This implies that resilience is not a passive thing, but rather an activity<\/em>.<\/p>\n

As designers, artists, and architects, the search for resilience embodies new ways of framing the problems affecting urban systems and then configuring solutions for these.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

\u2018Nature\u2019 designs resilience into its systems to persist beyond water shortages, fire, and inhospitable habitats. Humans are also actively applying resilience in their lives. The societal shifts we as a species have made over thousands of years are evidence of our capacity to persist by adapting ourselves, or the environment, to our needs. As individuals, we bounce back and carry on living after disturbances shake up our lives, again demonstrating qualities of resilience. From whichever angle we look at it, resilience represents a creative drive to carry on<\/em>. But the \u2018carrying on\u2019 strategy is not always the same and sometimes, in response to disturbances, adaptations<\/em> or transformations<\/em> are needed.<\/p>\n

Our cities and buildings form an important part of an ongoing ecosystemic project. What we mean by this is that cities are actually a part of a \u2018natural\u2019 living system. The flows of life that occur in rural areas, also occur in urban areas. The difference is that we have trained designers of the built environment to perpetuate the separation of the natural and built landscapes, in order to promote the economic drive for growth. The potential to support their integration<\/em> in a new understanding of economic potential is not nurtured in this model. This illustrates that architects have the ability to increase or decrease the potential for our cities to continually enable living systems to thrive within them<\/em>. Our role in harnessing, rather than limiting, the potential of the city to thrive in a holistic and ecologically sustainable manner is then very important. Design interventions are required that, firstly, build the capital reserves (economic, social, cultural, spiritual, ecological, etc.) of a place, and, secondly, enhance the general resilience of the city. However, both of these goals deal only with the physical resilience of the built fabric.<\/p>\n

What of the intangible aspects of resilience that guide our responses to, and views of, the world? Intangible aspects of resilience underpin thinking processes that inform the strategies with which we as designers view the world and use to respond to challenges. Perhaps the problem is not what we design, but how we design within the opportunities presented to us in the world. How do we design strategies for resilience that can allow for our cities to continue in a creative manner that is responsive to unknown challenges, to function within the limits of our planetary boundaries, and also to unlock our potential as humans to flourish?<\/p>\n

As designers, artists, and architects, the search for resilience embodies new ways of framing the problems affecting urban systems and then configuring solutions for these. These new ways of seeing are based on broad levels of consciousness that enable rich, self-generating interventions that can have positive ripples on our urban futures. In other words, we need to change the way we think about the city in its entirety if we hope to see different results when employing the word resilience. Fundamentally, then, resilience suggests a reevaluation of our value systems, of the ways in which we interact with decision-makers in the city, and, lastly ,our relationships with each other on a day to day basis. In this way, resilience thinking can be meaningful.<\/p>\n<\/div>

\n
Lloyd Godman<\/div>\n
\n

about the writer
\n Lloyd Godman<\/a>\n <\/h3>\n

Lloyd Godman is one of a new breed of environmental artists whose work is directly influencing 'green' building design<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

Lloyd Godman<\/h3>\n

Resilience: evolution and growth habit in Tillandsias, a bio-model <\/strong><\/p>\n

In terms of plant evolution, Bromeliads, a family of plants from South America, first appeared relatively recently, about 70-50 million years ago.<\/p>\n

Resilience in Tillandsias is evidenced by evolution, over millennia, into diverse species, and evolution of growth habit over short periods.<\/blockquote><\/figure>\n

About the same time as our ancestral forebears, the early apes, evolved on the planet (15 \u2013 30 million years ago), the massive Andes mountain range thrust upward from intense tectonic activity. In the geological upheaval, countless life forms became stranded by high, rocky peaks and deep valleys. Increasingly, each species was exposed to a \u201crapidly\u201d changing climate. Mostly drier, colder, and hotter. Relatively quickly (over a few million years), species either became locally\/permanently extinct or evolved.<\/p>\n

More than any, Tillandsias<\/em>, a genus of Bromeliads, diversified and about 1000 species evolved in an extremely short period. The success of their profound resilience was founded on adaptive evolution, through which they developed and refined a complex series of biological systems and growth habits that spawned a multitude of weird and eccentric plant forms that are often called air plants. One species,\u00a0Tillandsia<\/em>\u00a0tectorum<\/em> has been recorded growing in conditions of 75\u00b0C temperature change in a single day (-20\u00b0C to 55\u00b0C)<\/p>\n

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A range of Tillandsia species. Images: Lloyd Godman<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many evolved a xerophytic<\/em> habit (needing little water), became epiphytic<\/em> (growing on trees or other plants), or became saxicolous<\/em> (attaching to rocks or sheer cliffs). While the roots became a means only of holding the plant firm, their trichome cells (special cells on the leaf) became more efficient and able to absorb all moisture and nutrients from the atmosphere. Some species have grown in areas where no rain has fallen for more than 20 years. As a climatic defence, these silver cells reflect about 93 percent of the radiation from the sun. Tillandsias dispensed with traditional photosynthetic methods and used a CAM cycle<\/a> (a modification of typical photosynthesis) to biologically store energy from the sun, followed by growing at night, taking in CO2<\/sub>, and releasing oxygen in darkness, thereby reducing transpiration, which would dehydrate other plants grown in a similarly harsh climate.<\/p>\n