Speculating on the Role of Media Architecture in Post-disaster Rebuilding and Recovery: Insights from Architects and Interaction Designers

TL;DR

This paper explores how media architecture can support post-disaster rebuilding by fostering community, multispecies participation, and heritage preservation, based on empirical focus groups with designers and residents after the 2023 Kahramanmaras earthquake.

Contribution

It introduces a three-dimensional framework for media architecture in post-disaster housing, along with a co-speculative design process and ten innovative design ideas.

Findings

Media architecture facilitates social connections in post-disaster housing.

It enables multispecies participation and collective efforts.

It mediates heritage preservation and revival.

Abstract

In post-disaster contexts, design is not only about rebuilding structures but also about reimagining how architecture can become a communicative medium that supports recovery, resilience, and collective memory. While recent studies have expanded the understanding of media architecture from aesthetic urban screens to participatory civic infrastructures, there remains limited empirical research on its potential role in post-disaster contexts. In particular, opportunities exist to explore how architecture and interaction design might speculate on media architecture's role in rebuilding and recovery efforts for post-disaster permanent housing, especially when conceptualizing disasters as active agents that reshape design processes. Following to Kahramanmaras earthquake on February 6, 2023, we conducted two focus groups with architects and interaction designers in the case of Antakya, Turkey, building on affected residents' expectations for post-earthquake permanent housing. Our analysis revealed three critical dimensions of how future media architecture may support post-disaster housing: (1) as a facilitator of individuals' social connections to their community, (2) as an enabler of multispecies participation and collective efforts, and (3) as a mediator of heritage preservation and revival. With novel perspectives, we contribute a three-dimension lens for media architecture in permanent homes; a co-speculative, card-based process bridging residents' insights and expert design; and ten situated speculative design ideas with implications for design of post-disaster permanent homes.