By Patricia Lee Sharpe
Last December a terrible tsunami caught and killed at least 300,000 people who were too close to the shores of the Indian Ocean at the wrong time. The Indonesian island of Sumatra suffered the worst damage and loss of life.
Last night an earthquake of 8.7 magnitude struck Sumatra again. It caused tremors even in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, some 500 miles away. Many of the structures that might have been flattened by this major earthquake had already been swept away by the earlier quake’s tsunami.
This is a good time for me to be more explicit about a question I raised in my previous posting about investment priorities and earthquakes in Iran (March 1, 2005).
Since so many quakes happen in Muslim-inhabited areas, I can’t help wondering why the sponsors of the Aga Khan Awards for Architecture haven’t placed more emphasis on encouraging architects and town planners to come up with ways of housing poor people in quake-resistant structures.
For that matter, why can’t the contest serve to encourage town planners to find affordable ways to re-situate destroyed coastal villages so inhabitants can (1) sleep in their own beds without worry while (2) remaining sufficiently close to the fields they need to tend and the boats they need to launch? This, no doubt, is more complicated, legally, than rebuilding houses in situ, but the obstacles could be overcome, if the political will were mustered.
What’s behind the lack of urgency? Is it the sense of futility stemming from a genuine lack of money to fund such projects? Is it a mere deficiency in imagination? Is it a conviction that such projects will never turn a good profit? Or is it that artistic and bureaucratic elites simply can’t empathize with the hardworking people who raise the rice and net the fish that will be turned into savory dishes for the more fortunate, probably by servants?
I deeply appreciate the work that has been made possible through the Aga Khan Awards. In fact, I have been treated at the Aga Khan hospital in Karachi, with its striking architecture and beautiful grounds. And I am sensitive to the humanistic and cultural appeal of preserving historic buildings and the more ancient sectors of old cities. Here in the United States I have often lived in “historic districts.”
So we have a responsibility to history. Yet we also have a duty to the living and especially to those unable to command safe shelter let alone architectural excellence on their own. Farmers and fishermen can live in palaces, mansions, spacious modern houses only in their fantasies. But we know enough, from the architectural and engineering point of view, to build simple houses that won’t cave in when the earth quakes and may even survive a tsunami.
Setting standards and providing plans isn’t enough, of course. The standards have to be enforced. The temptation to leave out a little rebar or substitute sand for concrete is not a temptation to which only contractors in the developing world succomb.