LA: Rising from the ashes

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1:40Jonathan Glancey:In 200 yards, turn right onto East Mariposa Street. We're driving into Altadena. The streets are lined by glorious trees and behind those trees, set behind them, are houses of any number of different styles. How can a city recover from an almost unimaginable disaster? I'm Jonathan Glancy and you're listening to LA Rising from the Ashes. In this episode of the documentary from the BBC World Service, I'm driving through a beautiful neighbourhood in the north-east of Los Angeles. Picture peaceful suburban streets rising up to wild mountains behind. But the beauty and peace here is deceptive. Then suddenly, as you drive along, these strange vistas open up.

2:28Jonathan Glancey:The houses have just gone. On January 7th, 2025, the Alcidena and Pacific Palisades neighbourhoods of LA suffered two of the most destructive fires in the city's history. Fires which were whipped up by the Santa Ana winds into blazing hurricanes, killing at least 21 people and destroying more than 15 ,000 buildings over a combined area the size of Paris.

2:58I couldn't recognize my neighborhood. I'm an architect, and I know landmarks like the back of my hands, I think, but the entire neighborhood was leveled.

3:09Jonathan Glancey:Architect and Altatina resident, Scott Urio, lost his family home in the fire, which started in Eton Canyon. All you saw was the gas flames from all of the meters that were melted. Every house had these five-foot gas flames shooting up in the air, and then the chimneys. I frankly was embarrassed. I can't believe that this is the way that normal construction works in these neighborhoods to even allow this. Even before they were able to return to the wreckage of their homes, many Angelenos were asking themselves how they could help rebuild their city. This is a programme about the opportunity offered by these fires, an opportunity not just to recover what was lost, but to build something better, homes and neighbourhoods that could help communities across the world respond to the growing threat of fire.

4:05It sounds like a jet engine roaring. You have so many things that are burning. Everything you see around you is on fire.

4:12Jonathan Glancey:Dan Turner, former fire chief and director of the Cal Poly Fire Institute, has had decades of experience of the overwhelming power of Californian fires. As all these things burn, they're creating embers. You have multiple new fires that are starting downwind, and they're just spreading from one building to the next building to the next building. These were not forest fires. It was the buildings that were burning, burning building to building to building. With my resource, I can only protect one. Which one? It's the one that's most likely to survive anyway. If the building's on fire, you drive right by it.

4:56Fire has been a natural part of the environment in California for thousands and thousands of years. Over the last hundred years in California, there have been 40 or 50 catastrophic fires. The 20 most catastrophic fires have actually occurred in the last 40 years. We're starting to realize now that maybe we should really think about how we're building into this space so that we can be resilient to the impacts of fire.

5:30It's a really incredible place in the sense that you can turn one direction and look at the mountains and you can turn the other direction and look at the ocean. There's not many places in the world that you can do that. That's wonderful.

5:42Jonathan Glancey:I'm driving into the Pacific Palaces with Dustin Bramall. That gap between the ocean and the mountains is where you can build houses and build a city. The morning after the fires that destroyed his family home, Dustin and his friend Leo Siegel founded Case Study Adapt, a program to encourage LA architects to respond creatively to the risk of fire. The biggest challenge that we have is obviously just a more volatile climate. And with that more volatile climate, we have to recognize that a home is set in an environment and in a context. As we have more fires and more floods and other challenges, we really need to think about how we adapt to the places that we live, understanding that they're not going to be as stable as they were in the past.

6:29We have to design our houses in ways that are going to contemplate that there will be fires. I don't think that we're going to be in an environment where there won't be any more fires, but we're going to be able to adapt our way out of this. I'm pretty confident of that.

6:45Jonathan Glancey:Case Study ADAPT takes its inspiration from the pioneering 1940s Case Study Architecture program that led to the creation of 25 highly influential buildings, dream modernist Californian homes. On January 7th, I lost my house in the Palisades Fire. It was on Chautauqua Boulevard, which is the street that the original Case Study program actually started on. Eighty years later, we have this opportunity to bring back the program on the same street, just with a slightly updated mission that reflects the changing world that we live in. One of the challenges that I think Case Study Adapt is trying to work through is how do we actually take all of those ideas that we haven't really looked at from a design standpoint and integrate them in a way that is still going to be remarkable and beautiful and architecturally significant.

7:36Jonathan Glancey:Ellie's houses appear in a galaxy of different styles. Spanish colonial, arts and crafts, Hansel and Gretel, Tudor revival, art deco, mid-century modern. Most of the city's vast, broadly detached, single-family homes were thrown up at speed between the late 1920s and 1960s. With brick ruled out by earthquakes, they were built of wood and a cornucopia of toxic oil, lead and asbestos-based materials. People here love these homes, but in a fire zone they were a tragic liability, feeding the flames until nothing was left standing except rows of brick-built chimneys under a vast cloud of toxic brown smoke.

8:21So this is our block right here. This swing hanging from this tree is, you know, my kids would go out here every day and play on this thing. And so it's actually been kind of nice when we've come up here, despite it looking like a war-torn zone. The kids come up here and they still see the swing and they want to play on it. It feels like home still in many ways.

8:43Jonathan Glancey:And here it was, just nothing. We still have the view. The view is wonderful, and it always will be. Dustin has been deeply engaged with the design of his new home alongside architects Woodson Dangarum, and like Scott Urio in Altadena, his first priority is to exclude materials which fuel fire. Using simple construction methods, commonly used for building commercial buildings, steel frames, cement panels, spun rock wool, insulated metal frames filled with concrete, could begin to transform LA in the way cities from London to Chicago have transformed after their own great fires. One of the challenges with wood frame construction in general is that it's combustible, but also it adds to the fuel load.

9:29As one house catches on fire and then catches the next house on fire, now you have two houses on fire that are adding to that fuel load and accelerating the speed at which the fire is spreading. So a lot of these will have roller shutters and probably will sneak these into the window frame so they get a lot more subtle. The house itself is in many ways very simple, right? So it's three boxes that's connected by a covered walkway. There will be concrete, there will be stucco, there will be cabinetry, and glass. We will have no combustible material in the framing of the house. I think it's going to be a really striking architectural expression in a neighborhood where what you largely have is two-story houses that are pressed right up against the street here.

10:21It's not often that an architect does get to completely design their own home. It is definitely a dream and a nightmare. Strangely familiar is the thing, that you want to have elements that are familiar, but it is. It's 2026. We're in a new future as well. To live in a canyon in the Santa Monica Mountains, with an extraordinary view of the ocean, feeling like you're deep in nature. It is utterly alluring. And yet, every few years, I've stood on this balcony and I've looked north and you can see the flames whipping up. Probably every Angeleno knows someone who has lived in the mountains, lost their house to fire, rebuilt, even lost their house again, and still rebuilt.

11:14Jonathan Glancey:Architecture critic and long-term LA resident Frances Anderton moved here 35 years ago. She's struck by the remarkable acceptance many Angelenos seem to have of life lived in fire zones. In a city where people trade fire risk for a glorious view, convincing your neighbours to build in new ways becomes vitally important. I personally would find it very unnerving, but some people, many people, don't. there's something in the LA mindset that wants to live in these areas that are dangerous and also is pretty unfazed by the disasters. Our foreground view is Will Rogers State Park, so it's dark. And then over the ridgeline, you see, you know, the mountains fading into the sunset sort of alpenglow.

12:06And then you see the lights of downtown coming on, you see the lights of the planes landing. You have this incredible sense that you're not in the city, but you see the city over there. And it's really like this magical formula of being close but serene.

12:25Jonathan Glancey:Right at the very top of a twisting road leading to the peak, the crest of the Pacific Palisades, a road broken up now by construction work, stands a house, the Sycamore House, designed and lived in by the architect Michael Kovac, which has withstood the fire entirely. It was very clear that this was a possibility, that fire would impact our lives. One of the goals of the house was to make it be able to defend itself. That was married nicely with the other driving goal, which was to have a very ecologically friendly and sustainable house. I think the ultimate mark of sustainability is that the house is still there.

13:09It doesn't need to get rebuilt, you know, and use all those resources yet again.

13:13Jonathan Glancey:I'm Jonathan Glancy, and you're listening to LA Rising from the Ashes from the BBC World Service.

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14:28Jonathan Glancey:In 2010, architect Michael Kovac completed the Sycamore House, his ridgetop home in the Pacific Palisades. Michael and his wife Carina aimed to create a house that would be exceptionally sustainable. Based on passive technologies, cooled by natural airflow through the building and breezes from the sea, solar-powered, highly insulated, featuring a large water storage tank, and topped with a living roof of earth and plants, it was designed to need as little maintenance as possible in a landscape of earthquake, drought, and fire. So we blocked the door and left and came here to the studio and watched on our security cameras.

15:06We watched the news. We could see the fire just like house by house just, you know, exploding one at a time. And then our house completely wrapped. And it looked like a snowstorm, like a blizzard, but it was embers from the fire just completely surrounding. and clawing at the house.

15:25Jonathan Glancey:And there it is, look. Destruction everywhere I turn. Destruction way down this hill across this vast land stretching down to the ocean. And the house is just there, as if no fire had been here whatsoever. Visiting this house high above the city is an unsettling experience. Shaded by newly replanted sycamores, it stands undamaged and alone. Where there were once neighbouring homes, there are now burned out plots, sprouting energetic weeds. But as their neighbours start the long journey to rebuild, they are cleaning, rewiring, replanting their garden, and looking towards a future where, despite the destruction here, they will return to their home.

16:09Jonathan Glancey:Homes like Dustin's and Michael's are undoubtedly high-end propositions, complex and expensive, but they're also experiments with a shared benefit. They aim to test new approaches, which can then be taken up by more modest projects across the city. Dustin Brumley. Most of the cost when you're building with these new materials or trying new ideas is baked into the fact that you're doing it in many ways for the first time. The idea is that if we can sort of prove out some of these ideas with homes that might be higher cost, that maybe then people will be inspired and be able to take some of those ideas and implement them into lower cost homes.

16:47And it's not dramatic. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, some sort of science fiction mechanism that, you know, protected the house. It was a lot of small, common-sense decisions. One of the things is a fiber-cement siding. We happen to use a fairly robust product, and it's a sophisticated installation. But it's, ironically, one of the least expensive building materials. One of the things that's almost free to do is make sure that the venting is properly screened. If embers get through this in a fire, it has carte blanche to the house and that's the end. Homes have gotten very, very complicated.

17:24Every time you add a complication, that increased costs. If we want to build out of a different material, it adds costs. If we want to add shutters to the house, it adds costs. If we want to add sprinklers, it adds costs. So if we build a 2 ,000 square foot house and it costs$25 million, That's not a very practical idea as well. And so how do we balance those two realities? You can build a really incredible house actually by simplifying things down. The things that really continue to work the best for the house are the passive systems. So heat is always going to rise. Thermal mass is always going to moderate temperature swings.

17:59Cross ventilation, when you can use that, is basically free and wonderful. and where you put windows to make sure that you're capturing a view but not capturing more heat than you want. Passive thinking that can't break, it's not reliant on any machinery and then only then afterwards will we layer on technology.

18:25Jonathan Glancey:LA's architects are working to share their skill and insight for the good of their communities to rebuild not just their own homes, but their neighbours' homes too. But although residents of the Palisades have suffered the same trauma as those of Alcadena, there are significant differences. The Palisades are a wealthier and more empowered community, generally well-insured and well-equipped to navigate a claims process which can seem as if it's designed to avoid paying out. In Alcadena, where many families were underinsured or even uninsured entirely, the community is facing a threat to its very existence.

19:04Every day we're humbled by just the massiveness of the San Gabriel mountain range, but never did we ever have this view before. It's still surreal to see so much just horizontal scape.

19:19Jonathan Glancey:When architect and social justice advocate Stephen Lewis steps out of his front door, he sees, in place of his neighbours' homes, a mountain view that he never wanted to have. So the three homes directly across from ours are lost. There are two others down the street that are lost and several that were severely damaged. My neighbor Eric across the street tried immediately to start the process, and he got told no so many times every place he went in the county. Just like we never planned on waking up to this, neither did they, and so it's going just really slowly at the county. but he finally threw up his hands and bought a house in Connecticut and he's selling his property and it's just he gave up.

20:04Jonathan Glancey:The day after the fires, husband and wife architects Cynthia Siegler and Alex Athenson woke up in an airbed on a friend's floor. Before they'd even discovered that their own home had been saved by a sudden change in the wind, they started planning what they could do to help rebuild the community they feel so much a part of. Not only do you see all of this really diverse history of architecture, of urban fabric that was all destroyed, but you also see all of this heritage, all of this identity, all of this community similarly displaced and put at risk of not being able to return. So it was really important for us to not only figure out ways to retain this architectural identity, but also retain the diversity of the people that call those places home, that have called them home for decades and generations.

20:52As an American who, based on our societal structure, is considered a black person, which I'm very proud of, that community was able to find roots and settle in Altadena because at a time where other locations were redlined and preventing them to move and live, Altadena was not. You see the descendants of those people now having achieved great success and continue to own. While we're all trying to get insurance settlement straight, trying to start building, there are developers, corporate enterprises that are swarming around trying to purchase properties. As much as I'm concerned about the physical character of Altadena, I'm more concerned about the culture of the place.

21:37Jonathan Glancey:Alex and Cynthia have created the Foothill Foundation Catalogue a catalogue of not-for-profit home plans with a good level of fire resistance reflecting Altadena's eclectic architectural history By drawing on America's unique history of mail-order house catalogues they may have found a way to balance fire resilience with a return to the characterful mix of historic styles which so many of Altadena's residents loved Sears Roebuck was one of the leading retail companies in America, and they had this famous catalog of where you could buy pretty much anything. Families from coast to coast could literally flip through like a shopping brochure, pick out their home and have the plans and the kit of parts sent to their property.

22:22So from 1908 to 1940, Sears Roebuck built 75 ,000 homes across the United States. That's enough homes to rebuild Altadena 12 times over. So the precedent for this level of efficiency has been done before. I think with every disaster, there is always going to be people or companies coming in to do what they will. But there's also a very strong and proud community that is really trying to stay. And so what we developed with Los Angeles County was the pre-approved standard plan program. The first design that we developed was called the Lewis. And now the Lewis is pre-approved and can be built on multiple sites.