Researching Crises and Solutions with Urgency and Agency: An Introduction

Living with crises is becoming the norm in several settings by disaster, inequality and poverty, armed conflicts, or wicked combinations of these. Dealing with such situations, especially within architecture and urbanism practices, potentially brings timely lessons for articulating urgent responses with the provision of opportunities for stronger agency from involved parties. This chapter explains the rationale behind this book, which gathers research contributions from around the world focusing on how architects have been embracing three main challenges: mainstreaming risk reduction in recovery and reconstruction; enhancing inclusion through humanitarian architecture; and disentangling urban forced displacement. After a brief introduction, we present the book’s structure and contents, providing an overview of the following 12 chapters.