Catastrophic Design
with Eisuke TachikawaOffsite Japan
In an era of intensifying climate disasters and environmental crises, how can design help humanity adapt and survive? This course explores design responses to catastrophic events—from typhoons and earthquakes to floods and climate emergencies—through the lens of evolutionary adaptation.
Led by Eisuke Tachikawa, pioneer of disaster-responsive design and author of "Evolutional Creativity," students will learn how 3.8 billion years of evolutionary wisdom can inform urgent design solutions for our climate-changed world. The course demonstrates how nature's survival strategies can guide human responses to catastrophe.
At its core, students will master Evolutional Creativity—a methodology that mirrors biological evolution through iterative cycles of mutation and selection. Like evolution itself, creative solutions emerge not through linear planning but through generating diverse possibilities (variation) and testing them against environmental pressures (selection). This back-and-forth process—creating mutations through chance and filtering through necessity—produces designs that can truly adapt and survive.
Led by Eisuke Tachikawa, pioneer of disaster-responsive design and author of "Evolutional Creativity," students will learn how 3.8 billion years of evolutionary wisdom can inform urgent design solutions for our climate-changed world. The course demonstrates how nature's survival strategies can guide human responses to catastrophe.
At its core, students will master Evolutional Creativity—a methodology that mirrors biological evolution through iterative cycles of mutation and selection. Like evolution itself, creative solutions emerge not through linear planning but through generating diverse possibilities (variation) and testing them against environmental pressures (selection). This back-and-forth process—creating mutations through chance and filtering through necessity—produces designs that can truly adapt and survive.
The course introduces ADAPTMENT, Tachikawa's framework developed specifically for climate disaster response. Students will learn to design cities that can absorb floods like wetlands, buildings that flex like muscles during earthquakes, and communities that cooperate like ecosystems during crises. Drawing from real disaster responses in Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, students will understand how evolutionary principles translate into life-saving design interventions.
Through case studies of actual disasters—Super Typhoon Yolanda, the 2011 Japan earthquake, unprecedented floods—students will prototype adaptive solutions for emergency shelter, disaster communication, resource distribution, and community resilience. The goal: designs that don't just survive disasters but evolve stronger through them.
Through case studies of actual disasters—Super Typhoon Yolanda, the 2011 Japan earthquake, unprecedented floods—students will prototype adaptive solutions for emergency shelter, disaster communication, resource distribution, and community resilience. The goal: designs that don't just survive disasters but evolve stronger through them.
Learning Outcomes
Evolutionary Crisis Response: Master the iterative process of variation and selection, understanding how alternating between divergent creativity and adaptive filtering produces resilient solutions for disaster contexts.
Disaster-Adaptive Design: Create design interventions specifically for climate disasters—floods, typhoons, earthquakes, droughts—learning from nature's tested survival strategies.
ADAPTMENT Implementation: Apply the ADAPTMENT framework to design urban systems that can absorb, deflect, and recover from catastrophic events like living organisms.
Disaster-Adaptive Design: Create design interventions specifically for climate disasters—floods, typhoons, earthquakes, droughts—learning from nature's tested survival strategies.
ADAPTMENT Implementation: Apply the ADAPTMENT framework to design urban systems that can absorb, deflect, and recover from catastrophic events like living organisms.
Variation-Selection Cycles: Practice the fundamental evolutionary process: generating multiple design mutations, then selecting solutions based on environmental pressures and survival criteria.
Biomimetic Disaster Solutions: Draw from nature's disaster responses—how forests recover from fires, how coral reefs buffer storms, how ecosystems rebuild after destruction.
Community Resilience Design: Develop both hardware (infrastructure) and software (social systems) that help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
Adaptive Iteration: Learn to rapidly prototype and evolve designs under crisis conditions, embracing failure as part of the evolutionary selection process.
Biomimetic Disaster Solutions: Draw from nature's disaster responses—how forests recover from fires, how coral reefs buffer storms, how ecosystems rebuild after destruction.
Community Resilience Design: Develop both hardware (infrastructure) and software (social systems) that help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
Adaptive Iteration: Learn to rapidly prototype and evolve designs under crisis conditions, embracing failure as part of the evolutionary selection process.
Schedule
Lecture 10:00 AM - 12:30 JST
Crit 10:00 AM - 12:30 JST
Crit 10:00 AM - 12:30 JST
Eisuke Tachikawa
Design Strategist, Evolutionary Designer, and Founder of NOSIGNER
Eisuke Tachikawa is a design strategist and the founder of NOSIGNER, dedicated to solving social issues that impact our future through design. Author of "Evolutional Creativity" (winner of the prestigious Yamamoto Shichihei Prize), he has developed a creative methodology that applies biological evolution principles to design and innovation, now adopted by over 70 companies and universities worldwide.
As a World Design Organization (WDO) board member and Project Professor at Keio University Graduate School of System Design and Management, Tachikawa has pioneered frameworks for climate adaptation and disaster resilience. His disaster response initiatives include the OLIVE Project (post-2011 earthquake relief platform), PANDAID (COVID-19 response), and Tokyo Disaster Prevention—demonstrating design's critical role in crisis response and community resilience.
As a World Design Organization (WDO) board member and Project Professor at Keio University Graduate School of System Design and Management, Tachikawa has pioneered frameworks for climate adaptation and disaster resilience. His disaster response initiatives include the OLIVE Project (post-2011 earthquake relief platform), PANDAID (COVID-19 response), and Tokyo Disaster Prevention—demonstrating design's critical role in crisis response and community resilience.
His ADAPTMENT philosophy—combining adaptation, development, and management—provides systematic urban design strategies for climate change adaptation, viewing cities as living organisms that can evolve and adapt. Recipient of over 150 international design awards, he continues to drive innovation in disaster-responsive and climate-adaptive design globally.
