In 2025, a catastrophic landslide in Blatten, Switzerland destroyed over 180 historic buildings, while on the other side of the globe intensified lahars from Mount Merapi in Indonesia have posed serious threats to the Prambanan Temple and Yogyakarta’s sacred axis. Though triggered by natural forces, both disasters were amplified by human actions—permafrost thaw driven by climate change and unregulated sand mining. These converging pressures reveal how environmental and anthropogenic forces are increasingly entangled in the erosion not only of terrain, but also of cultural heritage. As the boundary between natural and human-induced hazards dissolves, the urgency to rethink preservation strategies for at-risk heritage landscapes becomes ever more pressing. Yet despite ample investigations in geology, climate science, and landscape architecture, the field of architecture and heritage preservation lacks methods and scalable strategies at the intersection of built heritage, environmental risks, and their mitigation.
Against this backdrop, the research asks: How does the blurring of boundaries between natural and human-induced hazards require new frameworks for understanding and managing vulnerability in heritage landscapes?
This research compares two high-risk heritage landscapes, Mount Merapi and the Swiss Alps to examine how environmental hazards intersect with cosmologies, built heritage, and political responses. It draws on cartography, sectional landscape analysis, and mental mapping to explore how diverse actors—including local communities, planners, and heritage institutions—perceive, negotiate, and reconstruct heritage in response to environmental disruption.The project reframes preservation as a dynamic, contested process shaped by environmental change and political decision-making. It calls for inclusive, culturally grounded approaches that bridge technical risk management with local memory and meaning. By linking Southeast Asian and Alpine contexts, the research offers a transnational lens on resilience, loss, and the politics of re-making in the Anthropocene.
This research aims to establish a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between built heritage and environmental risk, assessing the influence of cosmological frameworks, geological processes, human interventions and political decision-making. The findings will inform the development of design and preservation strategies.
Doctoral student: Baihaqi Abdullah
Poster image: © Ari Amphibia