Impact of Tsunami on places of east coast : place making in resettlements at Maruthamunai

Abstract

Societies in human settlements evolve and establish with an order and an organization. Such societies have specific characters, unique identities and an image, which represent their relationship with the context./ M,Physical context where these societies evolved is more important because of an individual's or societies social, psychological or physical attachment to it. Built environment in it, express the socio culture, socio-economy and the image of each Society./ . Disasters can completely destroy such established order and organization of a social context as well as building typologies and place morphology in a physical context. The consequence after a situation of a disaster will be displacement or reset emen t the disaster victims./ In such disaster situations the state sector and social organizations take immediate emeasures to provide shelter and necessary physical needs. Consideration given to sociological and psychological need of disaster victims is more significant, hut often focus on the quantitative needs of shelter./ Tsunami, the monstrous tidal waves that engulfed coastal areas of north east and south of Sri Lanka wiped out many human settlements and claimed thousands of precious lives. This nature's fury left the devastated coastal region dazed./ Therefore re-housing the societies is a complicated issue. Professional designers have to identify social issues of each society and consider architectural aspects to submit design solutions in resettlement process. This study is to identify the social issues of a particular society of a tsunami devastated settlement in Sri-Lanka.