TEL AVIV.- Life-saving information tweeted or posted on social networks during natural disasters; online diaries documenting personal confrontations with disaster; and instructions for constructing a temporary folding shelter, or for self-administered first aid, are some of the ways that individuals and communities worldwide mobilize in response to catastrophes. These and other examples featured in the exhibition represent bottom-up approaches capable of impacting reality in extreme situations.

Tel Aviv Museum of Art's Design and Architecture Department has devoted the past year to researching and planning the exhibition 3.5 Square Meters: Constructive Responses to Natural Disasters. This exhibition examines how communities and individuals worldwide prepare for natural disasters and mobilize in their immediate aftermath. Local and international humanitarian organizations offer rapid responses to such events. Yet alongside praise for the support and immediate assistance they provide, critiques of such humanitarian operations note the problematic aspects of responses that are not always compatible with the needs of a specific population. Bottom-up approaches complement such traditional top-down responses by carefully addressing conditions in the field and the particular needs of local communities. This exhibition centers on such bottom-up responses, which focus on the community and its strengths, by presenting a wide range of projects from diverse regions of the world. Revealing a fundamental change in approaches to coping with natural disasters, these projects are organized around four central themes: Sharing knowledge, social technology, expanded DIY processes, and contemporary revivals of the archaic community practice of storytelling.

Participants: Airbnb Disaster Response Program; Paul America; Shigeru Ban + Voluntary Architects' Network (VAN); Andrew Beck Grace; Better Shelter (IKEA Foundation + UNHCR); Ido Bruno and Arthur Brutter; Burners Without Borders (A Burning Man Project); Center for Instructional Development and Distance Education at the University of Pittsburgh; Conscious Impact Nepal; Field Ready; Oliver Hodge; Toyo Ito, Kumiko Inui, Sou Fujimoto, and Akihisa Hirata; Neta Kind-Lerer, William Briand, Anica James, Mitch Ward, and Jonathan H. Lee; Maya Kosover (An Israeli Story); MyShake; Nosigner Design; PetaBencana.id; Michael Reynolds; Stefano Strocchi; Ezri Tarazi; Twitter USGS; Urban Risk Lab at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.