ABSTRACT
Built environment experts, steeped in their default modes of operation, have been critiqued in post-disaster scenarios as silent perpetrators of unsustainable solutions that focus solely on physical deliverables, rendering them as ‘useless’. This paper, grounding the analysis in the recent post-earthquake landscape of Chile and its reconstruction plan in Constitución, adopts a theoretical framework of post-colonial discourse to elucidate the significance of the notion of the ‘expert as translator’, activating the capacity to amplify the voices of those excluded by dominant forms of knowledge production. Such an attempt would aim to challenge architecture, urban design and the built environment – as disciplines and as practices – in planning for equitable reconstruction. Aligned with Lefebvre’s socially produced space, the paper seeks to enlighten the idea of encouraging cultural agency and constructive insurgency in a post-disaster context. It examines how the adaptable, multiple, open, integrative and transformative qualities of reconstruction spaces are essential in responding to cultural differences and dynamic processes.
