ABSTRACT
Natural disasters are devastating events. Western cities are designed to prevent or control these events and minimize damage. With climate change at the forefront of our social, economic and political agenda, natural disasters are documented and researched with increasing scrutiny. Much of this research is concerned with the methods for rapid reconstruction, prevention or damage mitigation. This book chapter is concerned with what natural disasters can tell us about the city, our built environment and in particular the interior of our buildings. This chapter is also chiefly concerned with flood. Before the rapid clean up and redevelopment, there is much to examine from the detritus of flood. These extraordinary events proffer an opportunity to critique the way we inhabit and interact with our internal environments. The absent interior, the one that we cannot occupy, tells us so much about the interior environments that we exist in. The undesign of natural disaster is a method through which to critically analyze our patterns of existence within the city.
