Disasters rarely arrive with sufficient warning. Whether it’s a flood, an ice storm, or a wildfire, extreme events tend to unfold rapidly. In many instances, evacuation becomes impossible and the building you’re in becomes your lifeboat as you weather the storm.
For most people, this is a terrifying proposition. Conventional buildings are designed to operate with a constant supply of electricity to power heating, cooling, and ventilation systems. Take away that power, and conditions inside can deteriorate within hours. During the 2021 Texas winter storm, indoor temperatures in some homes dropped below freezing within a day, leading to countless frozen pipes and hundreds of fatalities. Later that year, a heat dome in the Pacific Northwest sent temperatures skyrocketing. Homes without cooling became lethal as a result. According to the Coroners Service in British Columbia, there were 619 heat-related deaths during the worst of the heat (from June 25 to July 1), making it the deadliest weather event in Canadian history.
Extreme events have become almost a constant threat during the 2020s, as we’ve seen some of the worst wildfire seasons in North American (in 2023 alone over 45 million acres of Canadian forests burned), one of the most devastating hurricanes in recent memory (Helene, 2024), and possibly the costliest fire in United States history (Los Angeles, 2025).
Adapting to the new realities of a changing climate is not optional. We need to change our behavior, and we need to change how we build.
Buildings can offer far more than just a roofs over occupants' heads. They can serve as actual havens during times of crisis, provided they are designed and built to withstand extreme conditions. Passive design strategies, which include continuous insulation, airtight envelopes, high-performance windows, and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, create structures that maintain livable conditions far longer than conventional buildings when external systems fail. A well-insulated, airtight building loses heat slowly in winter and resists heat gain in summer, buying occupants hours or even days of habitable conditions during a power outage. Because the envelope is tight, filtered mechanical ventilation can protect occupants from smoke and poor outdoor air quality—a critical advantage during wildfire events, when opening a window is simply not an option.
As extreme weather events grow more frequent and more severe, architects, engineers, and developers need to create buildings that protect their occupants when everything else fails.
This is designing for survivability.
What’s In Store?
Designing for Survivability is a four-hour virtual conference on May 15 that will bring together leading practitioners, researchers, and policymakers to tackle the issue head-on. Attendees will gain practical, project-ready advice for designing and building structures that protect people during extreme events, with each hour addressing a distinct dimension of resilient design. Whether you’re an architect, engineer, developer, policymaker, or building owner, this event will provide you with the knowledge and skills to design buildings that protect people when it matters most.
Part 1: Resilience Starts with Design (12:00–1:00 PM EDT) opens the day by examining how healthy building design forms the foundation of resilience and survivability. This session explores the role of indoor air quality, ventilation, filtration, thermal comfort, and material selection in supporting occupant wellbeing under everyday conditions but especially during times of crisis. By framing survivability as a design problem first, host Zack Semke (Director and Co-Founder, Passive House Accelerator and the Reimagine Buildings Collective) and presenter Scott Kelly (Founding Partner, Re:Vision Architecture) will establish a clear through-line for the day’s conversations and clearly state how Passive House principles and high-performance strategies create environments that are inherently more resilient.
Part 2: When Systems Fail (1:00–2:00 PM EDT) turns to what happens when buildings are pushed beyond normal operating conditions. Speakers will include Jeremy Shannon (Sustainability Director, Gensler), Trey Farmer (Principal, Partner, and Chief Sustainability Officer at Forge Craft Architecture + Design), and Mike Fowler (Associate Principal, Mithun), who will walk us through case studies involving real-world scenarios like heat waves, winter storms, and compound events such as wildfire smoke combined with power loss. Through their expertise and insights, the three speakers will provide practical guidance for integrating resilience across building systems.
Part 3: Designing for Fire Resilience (2:00–3:00 PM EDT) examines fire-rated assemblies, ember-resistant detailing, material selection, and tactics for maintaining indoor air quality during smoke events, including how to prioritize key design moves that significantly reduce fire exposure and improve building performance in high-risk environments. Featured speakers will include Timothy Lock (Management Partner, OPAL), Edwin Fang (Owner, Studio Fang), Nathaniel Heckman (Visiting Lecturer, Rochester Institute of Technology Department of Architecture), and Andrew Michler (Principal, Hyperlocal Workshop).
Part 4: The New Resilience Baseline (3:00–4:00 PM EDT) looks ahead to the systems, materials, and frameworks shaping the next generation of survivable buildings. Featuring Kritika Kharbanda (Head of Sustainability, Henning Larsen), Nicole Spina (Vice President of Climate Innovation & Industry Development, NYCEDC), Nichole Wiedemann (Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin School of Architecture), Jen Wong (Director of the Materials Lab, University of Texas at Austin), and Amanda Kaminski (Founder and Principal, Building Ecosystems), this closing session explores how innovation moves from pilot projects to scalable solutions. Each of our guests will discuss strategies for reducing embodied carbon, advancing circular design, and integrating new technologies into high-performance buildings.
As with all Reimagine Buildings events, there will be open networking sessions available throughout the day with folks from across North America and even around the world.
