Discusses long-term effects of pandemics on the built environment Examines pandemic effects on use of land, interior space, energy, and resources Exposes new-found abundance and what it means for design, wealth, work, and professional practice Thomas Fisher's accessible, engaging, and compelling writing attracts wide range of readers including professionals, instructors, students, and anyone interesting in how the pandemic has accelerated us into the future

Discusses long-term effects of pandemics on the built environment Examines pandemic effects on use of land, interior space, energy, and resources Exposes new-found abundance and what it means for design, wealth, work, and professional practice Thomas Fisher's accessible, engaging, and compelling writing attracts wide range of readers including professionals, instructors, students, and anyone interesting in how the pandemic has accelerated us into the future

Recent catastrophic events, such as the I-35W bridge collapse, New Orleans flooding, the BP oil spill, Port au Prince's destruction by earthquake, Fukushima nuclear plant's devastation by tsunami, the Wall Street investment bank failures, and the housing foreclosure epidemic and the collapse of housing prices, all stem from what author Thomas Fisher calls fracture-critical design. This is design in which structures and systems have so little redundancy and so much interconnectedness and misguided efficiency that they fail completely if any one part does not perform as intended. If we, as architects, planners, engineers, and citizens are to predict and prepare for the next disaster, we need to recognize this error in our thinking and to understand how design thinking provides us with a way to anticipate unintended failures and increase the resiliency of the world in which we live.

In Designing to Avoid Disaster, the author discusses the context and cultural assumptions that have led to a number of disasters worldwide, describing the nature of fracture-critical design and why it has become so prevalent. He traces the impact of fracture-critical thinking on everything from our economy and politics to our educational and infrastructure systems to the communities, buildings, and products we inhabit and use everyday. And he shows how the natural environment and human population itself have both begun to move on a path toward a fracture-critical collapse that we need to do everything possible to avoid. We designed our way to such disasters and we can design our way out of them, with a number of possible solutions that Fisher provides.

Recent catastrophic events, such as the I-35W bridge collapse, New Orleans flooding, the BP oil spill, Port au Prince's destruction by earthquake, Fukushima nuclear plant's devastation by tsunami, the Wall Street investment bank failures, and the housing foreclosure epidemic and the collapse of housing prices, all stem from what author Thomas Fisher calls fracture-critical design. This is design in which structures and systems have so little redundancy and so much interconnectedness and misguided efficiency that they fail completely if any one part does not perform as intended. If we, as architects, planners, engineers, and citizens are to predict and prepare for the next disaster, we need to recognize this error in our thinking and to understand how design thinking provides us with a way to anticipate unintended failures and increase the resiliency of the world in which we live.

In Designing to Avoid Disaster, the author discusses the context and cultural assumptions that have led to a number of disasters worldwide, describing the nature of fracture-critical design and why it has become so prevalent. He traces the impact of fracture-critical thinking on everything from our economy and politics to our educational and infrastructure systems to the communities, buildings, and products we inhabit and use everyday. And he shows how the natural environment and human population itself have both begun to move on a path toward a fracture-critical collapse that we need to do everything possible to avoid. We designed our way to such disasters and we can design our way out of them, with a number of possible solutions that Fisher provides.

Architectural Design and Ethics offers both professional architects and architecture students a theoretical base and numerous suggestions as to how we might rethink our responsibilities to the natural world and design a more sustainable future for ourselves. As we find ourselves on the steep slope of several exponential growth curves in global population, in heat-trapping atmospheric gases, in the gap between the rich and poor, and in the demand for finite resources, Fisher lays down a theory of architecture based on ethics and explores how buildings can and do provide both social and moral dimensions.The book also has practical goals, demonstrating how architects can make better and more beautiful buildings whilst nurturing more responsible, sustainable development. Architectural Design and Ethics will prove an invaluable text not only to those in the architecture field, but to anyone simply interested in the ethical issues surrounding our built environment. It joins the dots between architectural form, ethics and professional practice. It uses the history of ethics to present relevant lessons for today's practitioners. It provides a wake up call to architects, advocating a greater focus on ethics over aesthetics.

On August 1, 2007, just after 6:00 p.m., during the evening rush hour in Minneapolis, the 1,900-foot-long, eight-lane I-35W bridge buckled and crashed into the Mississippi River. The unimaginable had happened right on the doorstep of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. Many of the first responders were from the University, persevering in the midst of chaos and disbelief. In the ensuing weeks, research and engineering teams from the University reviewed the wreckage, searched for causes, and began planning for the future. The City, the River, the Bridge represents another set of responses to the disaster. Stemming from a 2008 University of Minnesota symposium on the bridge collapse and the building of a new bridge, it addresses the ramifications of the disaster from the perspectives of history, engineering, architecture, water science, community-based journalism, and geography. Contributors examine the factors that led to the collapse, the lessons learned from the disaster and the response, the policy and planning changes that have occurred or are likely to occur, and the impact on the city and the Mississippi River. The City, the River, the Bridge demonstrates the University's commitment to issues that concern the community and shares insights on public questions of city building, infrastructure, and design policy. Contributors: John O. Anfinson; Roberto Ballarini; Heather Dorsey; Thomas Fisher; Minmao Liao; Judith A. Martin; Roger Miller; Mark Pedelty; Deborah L. Swackhamer; Melissa Thompson.

Environmental Activism by Design, a monograph by architects and educators Coleman Coker and Sarah Gamble, challenges designers to actively engage the environmental crisis through their work, while articulating an optimistic, tangible means to pursue community good and environmental justice through design activism and engagement. The authors assert that in addition to greener buildings, cheaper housing, and technological fixes, we must rethink pedagogy and praxis so that every single architecture graduate can define equity and transform the profession. Environmental Activism by Design centres on the award-winning Gulf Coast DesignLab at the University of Texas, which works directly with clients and stakeholders to produce spaces for the public to learn and researchers to undertake their environmental work. Environmental Activism by Design asks readers to challenge themselves, as agents of social equity, environmental justice, and climate action, to pursue operative practices and transformation rather than mere keywords and consensus.

Ethics is one of the most important and least understood aspects of design practice. In his latest book, Thomas Fisher shows how ethics are inherent to the making of architecture - and how architecture offers an unusual and useful way of looking at ethics. The Architecture of Ethics helps students in architecture and other design disciplines to understand the major approaches to ethics and to apply them to the daily challenges they face in their work. The book covers each of the four dominant approaches to ethics: virtue ethics, social contract ethics, duty ethics, and utilitarian ethics. Each chapter examines the dilemmas designers face from the perspective of one of these categories. Written in an accessible, jargon-free style, the text also features 100 illustrations to help integrate these concepts into the design process and to support visual understanding. Ethics is now a required part of accredited architecture programs, making this book essential reading for all students in architecture and design.

Ethics is one of the most important and least understood aspects of design practice. In his latest book, Thomas Fisher shows how ethics are inherent to the making of architecture - and how architecture offers an unusual and useful way of looking at ethics. The Architecture of Ethics helps students in architecture and other design disciplines to understand the major approaches to ethics and to apply them to the daily challenges they face in their work. The book covers each of the four dominant approaches to ethics: virtue ethics, social contract ethics, duty ethics, and utilitarian ethics. Each chapter examines the dilemmas designers face from the perspective of one of these categories. Written in an accessible, jargon-free style, the text also features 100 illustrations to help integrate these concepts into the design process and to support visual understanding. Ethics is now a required part of accredited architecture programs, making this book essential reading for all students in architecture and design.

Envisioning what we need, when it doesn't yet exist: this, Thomas Fisher tells us, is what design does. And if what we need now is a better world-functioning schools, working infrastructure, thriving cities-why not design one? Fisher shows how the principles of design apply to services and systems that seem to evolve naturally, systems whose failures sometimes seem as arbitrary and inevitable as the weather. But the "invisible" systems we depend on for our daily lives (in education, politics, economics, and public health) are designed every bit as much as the products we buy and the environments we inhabit-and are just as susceptible to creative reimagining. Designing Our Way to a Better World challenges the assumptions that have led to so much poor performance in the public and private realms: that our schools cannot teach creativity, that our governments cannot predict the disasters that befall us, that our health system will protect us from pandemics, that our politics will remain polarized, that our economy cannot avoid inequality, and that our industry cannot help but pollute the environment. Targeting these assumptions, Fisher's approach reveals the power of design to synthesize our knowledge about the world into greater wholes. In doing so, this book opens up possible futures-and better futures-than the unsustainable and inequitable one we now face.

Envisioning what we need, when it doesn't yet exist: this, Thomas Fisher tells us, is what design does. And if what we need now is a better world-functioning schools, working infrastructure, thriving cities-why not design one? Fisher shows how the principles of design apply to services and systems that seem to evolve naturally, systems whose failures sometimes seem as arbitrary and inevitable as the weather. But the "invisible" systems we depend on for our daily lives (in education, politics, economics, and public health) are designed every bit as much as the products we buy and the environments we inhabit-and are just as susceptible to creative reimagining. Designing Our Way to a Better World challenges the assumptions that have led to so much poor performance in the public and private realms: that our schools cannot teach creativity, that our governments cannot predict the disasters that befall us, that our health system will protect us from pandemics, that our politics will remain polarized, that our economy cannot avoid inequality, and that our industry cannot help but pollute the environment. Targeting these assumptions, Fisher's approach reveals the power of design to synthesize our knowledge about the world into greater wholes. In doing so, this book opens up possible futures-and better futures-than the unsustainable and inequitable one we now face.