How Japan spent more than a century earthquake-proofing its architecture

Editor’s Note: Design for Impact is a series spotlighting architectural solutions for communities displaced by the climate crisis, natural disasters and other humanitarian emergencies.

CNN
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Scenes of buildings reduced to rubble were beamed around the world this week following a 7.5 magnitude earthquake that struck Ishikawa prefecture on Japan’s western coast on Monday.

The full extent of the damage is still unknown. At least 270 homes in the region were destroyed, authorities said, though the final figure is likely to be much higher. This number does not, for instance, include Suzu or Wajima, a city of more than 27,000 people just 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the quake’s epicenter where fire department officials said about 200 buildings had burned down, according to public broadcaster NHK.

These reports speak to the personal tragedies faced by many of the region’s residents. But while no two seismic events are directly comparable, earthquakes of similar force in other parts of the world — like a 7.6 magnitude quake that caused the collapse of over 30,000 buildings in Kashmir in 2005, for example — have often wreaked far greater destruction.

By contrast, Ishikawa may have escaped lightly, according to Robert Geller, professor emeritus of seismology at the University of Tokyo.

“Modern buildings appeared to do very well,” he told CNN the day after Japan’s quake, noting that older houses “with heavy clay tile roofs” seemed to have fared the worst.

“Most single-family houses, even if they were damaged, didn’t completely collapse,” he said.

An adage of seismic design states that earthquakes don’t kill people — buildings do. And in one of the world’s most quake-prone countries, architects, engineers and urban planners have long attempted to disaster-proof towns and cities against major tremors through a combination of ancient wisdom, modern innovation and ever-evolving building codes.

From large-scale “dampers,” which swing like pendulums inside skyscrapers, to systems of springs or ball bearings allowing buildings to sway independent of their foundations, technology has progressed dramatically since the Great Kanto earthquake flattened large parts of Tokyo and Yokohama just over 100 years ago.

But innovations mostly…