2024-04-22
34 分钟Millions of people around the world are displaced by the enhanced natural disasters brought on by climate change, and sometimes, our economically driven world makes us feel powerless. Alyssa-Amor Gibbons knows about climate devastation and its effect on community first hand – but she thinks we can tap into our resilience through the power of design. In this episode, Alyssa shares how architecture can fundamentally change our perspective and our relationship to the planet – while helping us honor the indigenous communities that have sustained it for millennia. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts
Ted audio collective.
You're listening to how to be a better human.
I'm your host, Chris Duffy.
Architecture is an art form that to me often is invisible.
But when I do start to pay attention to it, when I start to really see it, I realize how huge an impact architecture has on my day to day life.
I mean, it's no exaggeration to say that it is literally all around me.
Since I'm indoors right now.
Architecture is more than just our physical spaces, though.
It also determines how well our homes, our offices and our other structures hold up under pressure or in a natural disaster.
And that's a factor that's increasingly urgent in the face of climate change.
That is exactly what today's guest, Alyssa Amore Gibbons, focuses on in her work.
Her approach to architecture has not only helped me to think more about architecture itself, it's also changed the way that I think about resilience.
Here's a clip from her TED talk.
As a child growing up in Barbados, there were two things I can count on every summer school break and the hurricane season.
At some point, we would go through this whole routine of duct taping all the glass doors in these big x patterns, tightly boarding up all the windows except for one or two, so that, as my mother would curiously put it, we could let the wind come through and put in buckets in the living room to catch the rain in a futile attempt to stop our house from flooding.
When the roof started to billow and sag in the wind, I hated it because I was terrified the entire time.
Whether it was a tropical wave, a thunderstorm, a tropical storm, or the tail end of an actual hurricane that barely missed us, it was all the same to me.
A possible end.
No light, no water, no electricity.
Just a simple battery operated radio waiting for the all clear.