Design By Fire

Around the world, the impacts of wildfires are increasing and expanding. Design by Fire is a set of projects that examine these challenges and provoke conversations about the role design might play in intentionally shaping futures. Design by Fire spans multiple media,  including a book documenting nearly 30 international case studies of creative fire design; a public exhibition - Pyro Futures - that invites participants to experience different future scenarios; a website where public concerns and experiences with wildfires are collected and shared; and a landscape installation imparting new fire mascots into the collective imagination. Above all, Design by Fire seeks to communicate that we have a choice in what our fiery futures could be.

Design in a Time of Fire

Globally, the risks and impacts of wildfires are increasing, intensifying and expanding. Due to many human actions and past legacies –  be it settler-colonialism, land conversion, development, and the burning of fossil fuels that are warming the climate – the very nature of fire is rapidly changing. Such changes present extreme challenges, questions and opportunities for design and land-fire stewardship.

Design by Fire is a set of communicative works that respond to this challenge by facilitating exploration of our collective relationships with fire. These works examine fire through time, examining past and current stewardship to help inform speculation on what could be. Above all, these projects attempt to communicate that we have a choice in crafting the fiery futures we will come to inhabit.

Diverse Media Distribution

Design by Fire has reached many audiences through a published book, an exhibition, a website and a landscape installation.

Design by Fire: Resistance, Co-creation and Retreat in the Pyrocene is a published book that researches and curates 27 global case studies of fire design and stewardship. The book visualizes these examples through diagrams, imagery and maps, and categorizes them into three general approaches: those that resist fire and forces of landscape change, those that embrace and co-create with those forces, and those that try to retreat and minimize human intervention. This book is the first of its kind, both in depth and approach, for the design and planning disciplines.

Pyro Futures is a participatory exhibition in a prominent public art museum that encourages participants to feel their way into the future. The exhibition consists of four parts: (1) a large map of California and its fire risk zones, in which participants can insert pins wherever they live, or have lived. (2) A large glass case full of diverse objects and images used to help participants imagine three very different potential futures for the state. (3) Pyro journals that participants can write in responses to questions about fire and what concerns them most. And (4) a set of printed postcards that participants can take with them and mail to friends and government officials to extend the exhibition beyond the gallery.

Pyro Futures also exists as a website where public responses to questions about fire futures are collected and shared, and visitors can vote for their favorite new fire mascot.

ONLY YOU Can Decide our Fiery Future is a billboard along the I-80 freeway in California. It features Burnie the Bobcat, a mascot promoting beneficial fire, and includes a link to the Pyro Futures project.

These diverse media platforms were selected to reach wide audiences across a range of spaces, be they academic, professional, museum goers, or the general public.

Impact and Effectiveness

Design by Fire has been featured across a range of prominent news outlets, reaching over 5 million people.The ONLY YOU billboard has been seen over 4 million times; the Pyro Futures website has over 7,000 page hits, and the museum exhibition has hosted over 14,000 visitors. Parts of the exhibit (book, journals, postcards, and wearable Burnie the Bobcat pin) were requested by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and are a permanent part of its Environmental History Collection. Pyro Futures is also being included and considered in additional venues.