ABSTRACT
The number of weather-related disasters has grown rapidly in recent decades, the product of an unstable and increasingly erratic global climate. Architects have often benefited from the work that follows disasters even though the destruction of buildings as a result of earthquakes, fires, and floods also results from designs that did not anticipate such events. Ethics demands that the profession take responsibility for that legacy and proactively address the vulnerability of the built environment to disasters, much as public health addresses that vulnerability in human populations. And architects will have no choice but make this a bigger part of practice: the number and severity of disasters are expected to get even worse in the decades ahead.
