When Buildings Survive but Systems Fail
Earthquakes are extreme, but they are revealing. They show how societies respond to risk, where responsibility sits, and what our systems are really designed to protect. For architects, they expose the gap between survival and resilience, between what buildings are engineered to do and what communities need in order to recover.
I was recently in California for a friend’s wedding, which coincided with renewed conversations about risk in the built environment. In the U.S., architectural qualification is state-specific, shaped by local climate, regulation, and hazard. California, in particular, places strong emphasis on earthquake design. Yet it is not earthquakes that have defined the state’s most recent disasters, but wildfires. Entire neighbourhoods have been rendered uninsurable, exposing the fragility of systems beyond the building itself.
As climate events grow more extreme and unpredictable, the boundary between natural disaster and systemic failure is increasingly blurred. Buildings may survive, but livelihoods, infrastructure, and communities do not always follow.
This essay looks at two regions on the same Pacific Ring of Fire, California and Japan, facing the same seismic risk but responding in fundamentally different ways. Their contrast offers lessons beyond earthquakes alone. It invites reflection on our own context in the UK, where risk is quieter but no less real, and where ageing infrastructure and climate instability are testing systems that were never designed for such strain.
Survival Is Not Resilience
In California, seismic design is rigorous and highly regulated. Buildings are engineered to resist collapse and allow occupants to escape. Life safety is the benchmark and, on paper, it is well achieved. Recent disasters have shown how brittle the surrounding systems are. Insurance is retreating. Infrastructure is strained. Many residents are effectively self-insured. A building may stand but remain uninhabitable; a neighbourhood may survive structurally yet fail socially and economically. Codes manage failure but do not ensure continuity of homes, livelihoods, or communities.
Resilience Is a System, Not an Object
This exposes the limits of building-scale solutions. What does compliance mean when power, water, finance, and governance fail around a perfectly engineered structure? At what point does resilience stop being a technical problem and become a civic one?
Preparedness as Everyday Infrastructure
In Japan, earthquakes are treated as a collective condition, not an exception. Preparedness is embedded in daily life, in infrastructure, behaviour, and expectation.
Early-warning systems provide seconds of notice. Trains brake. Lifts stop. Gas lines isolate. People take cover. The alerts are universal, rehearsed, and trusted. They do not prevent earthquakes; they prevent panic and cascading failure. Preparedness here is ordinary, not heroic. It is designed into systems rather than delegated to individuals.
Designing for Continuity
Japanese seismic codes prioritise performance, not just survival. Buildings are expected to remain usable after moderate events and avoid collapse in extreme ones. Hospitals stay operational. Utilities flex rather than snap. Streets double as evacuation routes and service corridors.
Architecture is understood as part of a connected civic network, expected to absorb shock, recover quickly, and support collective stability.
Fragmentation vs Alignment
In places like Los Angeles, early-warning technology exists, but responses are fragmented. Systems rely on opt-in participation and isolated protocols. The result is a series of individual reactions rather than a coherent civic response. The difference is not technological. It is cultural and institutional.
Why This Matters in the UK
The UK does not face earthquakes, but it does face systemic stress. Heatwaves, flooding, drought, and cold snaps now arrive within the same year, testing buildings and infrastructure designed for historic norms. Our regulations remain largely reactive. Compliance is achievable; resilience is not guaranteed. The gap between what we design for and what we experience is widening.
Japan’s example suggests that resilience is not primarily about stronger buildings. It is about alignment between design, infrastructure, policy, and public expectation.
A Broader Duty of Care
Earthquakes make visible what slower crises often hide: buildings alone cannot carry the burden of resilience. For architects, duty of care may need to extend beyond structural adequacy toward how our work participates in wider systems of continuity and recovery. In an era of uncertainty, resilience is no longer a specialist concern.
Works Cited
Federal Emergency Management Agency. NEHRP Recommended Seismic Provisions for New Buildings and Other Structures. FEMA P-1050, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2020.
Japan Meteorological Agency. Earthquake Early Warning (EEW): Overview and Performance. JMA, 2023.
National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience. E-Defense: Full-Scale Earthquake Testing Facility. NIED, Japan, 2022.
United States Geological Survey. ShakeAlert: Earthquake Early Warning System. USGS, 2024.
Vale, Lawrence J., and Thomas J. Campanella, editors. The Resilient City: How Modern Cities Recover from Disaster. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Higher Education Policy Institute. The Demand for Higher Education to 2030. HEPI, 2023.
