The International Hurricane Research Center in Miami features 12, six-foot tall fans—a virtual Wall of Wind—capable of simulating Category 5 hurricanes to test the performance of structures and materials. In the weeks before the exhibition Designing for Disaster opened on May 11 at Washington, D.C.’s National Building Museum, a wildfire in Oklahoma forced 1,000 people to evacuate and tornadoes ripped through the South and Midwest, killing 34 people. In the U.S., the threat of natural disaster is always with us. As the exhibition (open through August 2, 2015) makes clear, our strategies for preventing disasters and lessening their impacts have