Catastrophic Design

with Eisuke Tachikawa

In an era of escalating climate disasters, how can design help humanity adapt and endure? This course examines design responses to catastrophe—from earthquakes and typhoons 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, the course draws on 3.8 billion years of evolutionary intelligence to inform design for a climate-changed world. Students learn how nature’s survival strategies can guide human responses to crisis.

At the core is Evolutional Creativity, a methodology that mirrors biological evolution through cycles of variation and selection—generating diverse ideas, testing them against real-world pressures, and refining what endures. Students also explore ADAPTMENT, Tachikawa’s framework for climate and disaster response, which treats cities and communities as living systems capable of adaptation.

Through global case studies and hands-on prototyping, students design adaptive solutions for shelter, communication, resource distribution, and community resilience—creating work that doesn’t just survive disaster, but grows stronger through it.

Learning Outcomes

Evolutionary Crisis Response — Master the iterative cycle of variation and selection, learning how to balance divergent creativity with adaptive filtering to produce resilient solutions for disaster contexts.

Disaster-Adaptive Design — Design targeted interventions for climate disasters—floods, typhoons, earthquakes, and droughts—drawing on nature’s proven survival strategies.

ADAPTMENT Implementation — Apply the ADAPTMENT framework to design urban systems that absorb, adapt, and recover from catastrophic events—much like living organisms.

Variation-Selection Cycles — Practice the core evolutionary process by generating multiple design mutations and selecting solutions based on environmental pressures and survival criteria.

Biomimetic Disaster Solutions — Draw inspiration from nature’s disaster responses—how forests regenerate after fire, how coral reefs buffer storms, and how ecosystems rebuild after disruption.

Community Resilience Design — Create both hardware (infrastructure) and software (social systems) solutions that enable communities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters.
Adaptive Iteration — Learn to rapidly prototype and evolve designs under crisis conditions, treating failure as a vital part of the evolutionary selection process.

Schedule

Wednesday, 8:30AM–10AM JST

Eisuke Tachikawa

Design Strategist, Evolutionary Designer, and Founder of NOSIGNER

Eisuke Tachikawa is a design strategist and founder of NOSIGNER, focused on addressing future-facing social challenges through design. He is the author of Evolutional Creativity (Yamamoto Shichihei Prize), which introduces a biology-inspired design methodology now used by more than 70 companies and universities worldwide.

A World Design Organization board member and Project Professor at Keio University, Tachikawa has developed influential frameworks for climate adaptation and disaster resilience. His initiatives—including the OLIVE Project (post-2011 earthquake), PANDAID (COVID-19 response), and Tokyo Disaster Prevention—demonstrate design’s role in crisis response and community resilience.

Through his ADAPTMENT philosophy, he frames cities as living systems capable of evolving in response to climate change. With over 150 international design awards, Tachikawa continues to shape global approaches to disaster-responsive and climate-adaptive design.