Wildfire Resilient Village of the Future

Abstract

In the summer of 2021, an exceptional number of 270 wildfires took place among the entire Turkish coast. Multiple villages have been destroyed. Villagers lost their loved ones, houses and income sources. According to climate scientists, the wildfires will occur more often due to hotter summers. This emerges the question on how destroyed villages in wildfire risk areas will be rebuilt in a new wildfire resilient way, involving local building skills and knowledge in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. Kalemler village is chosen as the research and design area, because it is one of the most damaged villages and representative for other burned villages in the Mediterranean region.

The current rebuilding plans do not involve wildfire resiliency and there is no worldwide research on how to rebuild villages in a wildfire resilient way. Looking at Turkish villages on the national scale, Turks always historically provided themselves with self-built dwellings made of earth, stone or wood. This shows the opportunity to reintroduce earth as a building material in an innovative way, since earth is a directly available and non-combustible building material. Also, it is free when excavated on site, endlessly recyclable and has many other building benefits. Rammed earth is implemented as the new earth construction method for the village. It contributes on the scales of community and building construction as the research outcome on how innovation of vernacular façade earth construction methods could contribute to a wildfire resilient rebuilding strategy for burned down villages in the Mediterranean region of Turkey.

This project results in Kalemler as the wildfire resilient village of the future, tackled on five scales from the wildfire resilient rebuilding strategy: community, village, building typology, construction and landscape. This translates into a wildfire resilient village rebuilding plan, including a community centre, an independently working water and energy collection and distribution system. This system consist of a water tower, infrastructure points and walkable village walls. Furthermore, it translates into a growing wildfire resilient village house design and building guidelines for local self-builders. The growing village house typologies take the regional earthquake risk into account as well. All in all, this project involves the locals, respects local culture, harvests local materials, innovates local skills and knowledge on self-building with earth, and combines earth construction with innovative wildfire resilient solutions. Kalemler becomes a fusion village, where tradition meets innovation.