Four months have passed since the Eaton and Palisades fires devastated Los Angeles neighbourhoods. In recent weeks, signs of repair and restoration are underway: FEMA workers clear sites, loading trucks full of concrete and steel debris, while charred oak trees show green signs of life. Many design-oriented groups are trying to chart the next steps for residential architecture. For example, FORT Los Angeles launched ‘Healing the Heart of LA’, and the new Case Study Adapt programme aims to pair ten select architecture firms with displaced families.

Read More …

How do we steward the past into the future? As a conservationist and director of the graduate programs in heritage conservation at USC School of Architecture, the question is often on the mind of Trudi Sandmeier. A few weeks after the fires in Los Angeles indiscriminately engulfed neighbourhoods in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, it’s become an important and regular refrain. The fires destroyed individual structures, some designated as historically or architecturally important, and tore a rent in the cultural fabric of the city. In their aftermath, the ways that we give meaning to the buildings and places around us have changed.

The Palisades Fire ravaged Sandmeier’s home, leaving just the foundations. As she grieves that tremendous loss, she’s also working to understand her own role in guiding Los Angeles forward. ‘As heritage conservationists, we are storytellers,’ she says. ‘We have skills that are needed at a time of crisis to help people—to help ourselves—understand both what we’ve lost and, more importantly, what remains.’
Read More …