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Dear DnA Readers,
It feels like a lifetime since blithely writing to you a couple of weeks back, just before the savage fires swept through our region. Now, to all of you who have lost homes, businesses, pets, personal treasures, connections to community, and lifelines to memories, I am so sorry.
As has been widely reported, there has been a huge outpouring of aid. Some of it is aimed at meeting needs right away, like donating clothing and food and money to get by, or providing a spare room or short-term stay, or, in the case of the Pacific Design Center, serving as a conduit for furnishings.
Some of it is looking at the longer-term, mammoth project of rebuilding, and numerous designers and builders have stepped up to offer pro bono help with everything from practical advice to assessing damage to navigating FEMA and working through the costs of rebuilding. 850 architects joined a call organized by AIA/LA, leading to the founding of a Wildfire Task Force to provide "immediate assistance, mid-term recovery, and long-term rebuilding efforts."
Some are looking at the challenge from a deeply personal place — having lost their own homes to fire — and are on the path from grief to contemplating renewal.
They might take heart from two who've already made that journey: Greg Kochanowski and Geoffrey Von Oeyen. Both lost houses in the 2018 Woolsey Fire. Von Oeyen had designed the Horizon House for his brother in Malibu and it was completed just days before it burned to the ground. As I reported then on KCRW, the brothers pondered rebuilding and decided to go ahead, putting the new structure on the same footprint but revising the material choices and water systems so the house became a kind of firefighting machine. It survived the Palisades Fire. Kochanowski turned his experience into deep research into building in the "periurban" Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), along with a related issue: home ownership models promoting equity. He wrote two books, The Wild, and the forthcoming Wildlands in the Expanded Field.
You can hear from Greg and Geoffrey, along with other designers, builders, a housing protection lawyer, and homeowners and renters displaced by fire in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, at an event taking place this Saturday: The Heart of LA: Memory, Resilience and the Road to Recovery, presented by Friends of Residential Treasures (FORT:LA) and Helms Design District, with an assist from me.
We will hear testimonials and mourn losses. We will consider immediate housing security needs, and we will touch on rebuilding, costs, insurance, permitting and ways in which to build back that restore a sense of place, with resilience for the future. We will also launch a design competition, for buildings to replace two beloved, lost landmarks.
While hearts and minds are currently focused on immediate needs, a conversation is already percolating up about the bigger picture: land use. Many experts argue that we’ve spent decades extending urban sprawl into the fire-prone foothills and mountains while resisting building more densely in the safer flat lands close to mass transit. That proximity to nature has been a hallmark of California living, it is deeply desirable, and in some locations, it is also a vital, affordable home ownership option. But the risks of this pattern of development are now compounded by climate change — not only in California, but nationwide. We are in a moment of great crisis and, perhaps, potential for urban change that might intersect with LA's other big challenge: hosting the 2028 Olympic Games.
Taking on all this will be some great speakers, in addition to the aforementioned architects.
Click here to RSVP for the free event.
And now read on for Design Things to Do, some of which have changed dates due to the fires.
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Toilet, Yoyogi Fukamachi Mini Park, designed by Shigeru Ban; image courtesy 
A Shetland sky; mage courtesy 
