Architecture and Vulnerability

A defining property of climate breakdown is that it renders everything—human and beyond-human—vulnerable. At an individual level, vulnerability is often translated into a feeling of helplessness in the face of devastating forces. At a collective level, vulnerability is commonly responded to in terms of the design and implementation of protective measures. In terms of policy, vulnerability to climate is addressed through various risk management strategies. At a wider level, nation states are left utterly vulnerable to the physical effects of climate, from rising sea levels to desertification. Species are vulnerable on a spectrum from displacement to extinction. Natural ecologies are dynamically vulnerable, exposed to the swirling disruptions of climate collapse. Nothing escapes the effects of climate and the way it induces vulnerability, though all these vulnerabilities are experienced unevenly depending on demographics, privilege and context. Vulnerability is socially produced, shaped in each instance by the specific historical and political conditions that give rise to it. And because Architecture is Climate, this includes the profession, people, discipline, discourses, and education of architecture.