Distinguished Speaker Series: Design Before Disaster

About the Talk

Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness

Across the globe, few sites have faced as many environmental disasters as the islands of the Japanese archipelago. They have endured typhoons, cyclones, floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. Residents of Japan have responded to their precarious circumstances by developing a unique culture of disaster preparedness, known as bōsai, one that has become embedded in everyday life. It has equipped the island nation to plan for future emergencies and to greatly reduce their impact. In this practical, engaging text, Miho Mazereeuw—who has carried out ethnographic fieldwork and space-based analysis for more than two decades—offers a detailed framework to design and prepare for anticipated disasters and describes effective interventions in urban landscape and architecture. An urgent and timely book, Design Before Disaster represents the cutting edge in disaster mitigation and adaptation to empower communities in the world's most vulnerable places.

About the Speakers
Miho Mazereeuw is the MIT Climate Mission Director for Empowering Frontline Communities. Trained as an architect and landscape architect, she is an associate professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at MIT and is the associate head of Strategy and Equity in the department. Mazereeuw taught at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and worked in the offices of Shigeru Ban, Dan Kiley as well as the Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam prior to joining the faculty at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mazereeuw also leads the Urban Risk Lab, which focuses on designing resilient cities that are prepared for climate risks such as flooding, cyclones, and heat stress. The multi-disciplinary team engages in action research through extensive field work and community workshops both locally and abroad to meet the needs of diverse cultures and contexts. The Urban Risk Lab aspires to change the course of current global development trends through a radical shift in education and action with the goal of increasing resilience and proactively embedding preparedness in this rapidly urbanizing world.

Her forthcoming book, Design Before Disaster: Japan's Culture of Preparedness, is being published by the University of Virginia Press in September 2025.

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