Fire Aftermath Musings

In the days, weeks, and now months after the L.A. wildfires, knots of survivors of the estimated 30,000-plus people scattered by the devastation could be seen in the ruins of their homes, scavenging, before the burnt debris was removed by the Army Corps of Engineers or private contractors.

In scarred and scorched communities of the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and my Malibu, bent on hands and knees, residents, some with family and friends, crawled cautiously through toxic rubble, fumbling and scratching for whatever personal remnants, however charred, bent, or broken, that somehow prompt a remembrance to be cherished.

And beyond the heart aching personal sorrow is the communal sorrow, for also being mourned by the surviving residents—and by Angelenos beyond —are the many and varied neighborhood landmarks ravaged by the wildfires.

So I write in my latest commentary on the aftermath of the wildfires, this one in CommonEdge.org, a preeminent national website reporting on public engagement in the planning and design of the built environment, and abridged here for my Malibu followers:

To somehow focus and give form to this public sorrow, an imaginative, speculative design competition arose, challenging architects and designers to reimagine select ashen public and semi-public sites, interestingly, not as “exercises in reconstruction, but acts of memory, creativity and hope.”

Sponsored by Friends of Residential Treasures: LA (FORT LA), the competition, boldly labeled “Healing the Heart of LA,” attracted few entrants, 10 in total. This was not unexpected, given a modest reward of $3,000 and exacting criteria that the designs being sought be a“love letters” to the city, based on three essential pillars: memory, resilience, and recovery.

Specifically, the guidelines declared the designs should be “an exercise in creativity, innovation, and celebration of our lost heritage, so notable for its eclectic architectural and social character. By emphasizing the potential of these places, the competition aspires to generate new perspectives and foster meaningful discussions on how history and innovation can converge in impactful ways.”

But as a caution, the caveat that the competition was “entirely speculative and does not seek to create expectations for actual reconstruction” was added. Though this no doubt discouraged possible entrants, those that did submit notably responded to the distinctly varied community landmarks consumed by the wildfires suggested for reimagining, lending much latitude to the competition.

Given the diversity of the sites and settings, it was not surprising that the entries engagingly differed as the landmarks that inspired them, so much so that the jury selected two winners, not incidentally, reduced the winning rewards to $1,500 each.)

Winning for reimagining the destroyed landmark Business Block in the Palisades downtown" as a memorial park was propitiously Finn Bradley, a 30-year-old architect who came of age in the village. The Block was one of the first commercial buildings in Pacific Palisades, built in the 1920s—as, coincidentally, so was Bradley’s mother’s nearby bungalow home.

On a personal note, the Block also housed a bank where I once kept a deposit box of when I moved to nearby Malibu, primarily for family documents to be safe from the fires I knew were inevitable in the then late last century. In time I surrendered the box, but was told recently the vault and its contents miraculously survived the fire even though the building above it did not.

The Block was actually in decline when it was ravaged by the wildfire, its roof and interiors destroyed, while its iconic facade remained. It is this that Bradley preserves as an iconic entry into a park in which he proposes to memorialize the history of the Palisades while providing open space and an amphitheater for public events, gatherings, and an escape from the oppressive commercialism of the village center, and, as the architect contends, “a very poetic and beautiful solution for the new vernacular of the post fire Palisades.”

The other winner was a trio of second-year architecture students at the University of Southern California: Payton Hughes, Daybrea Ayers, and Jemima Chery. They redesigned a retreat known as the Nature Friends Clubhouse that had been a community center on the outskirts of Altadena, catering to outdoor activists for 100 years, before being burnt to the ground in the fires.

As a nod to the past, the proposed structure’s site and massing are relatively the same as the original, as is some indicated Alpine styling. But the interior design, with its multiuse spaces, is more flexible; the exterior, with its expansive windows, more modern and the total more sustainable, creating what the designers declared was not a replacement, but “an evolution of the original spirit, a place where the community can gather, celebrate and connect.”

In further sharp contrast was the proposal to build a striking new and decidedly affordable motel on the prominent Pacific Coast Highway site of the dated, deteriorated, and long-vacant century-old Topanga Ranch Motel, a landmark of sorts Malibu commuters know well.

To be sure distinctive, the new motel proposed by the firm of Tierra Sol y Mar would be made of sustainable, repurposed 40-foot-long recycled shipping containers wrapped in fire-resistant straw bales, plastered with local mud, and shaded by photovoltaic fabric roofs.

According to the proposal, this would be the centerpiece of a rebuilt commercial cluster of homey restaurants, a bait shop, and feed and outdoor furniture store that also had been destroyed in the fires. I personally would look forward to Cholada being rebuilt, remembering well the Thai cuisine I picked up there on the countless way home to Malibu for a family feast.

Perhaps if the proposal is embraced by a patron and, it being in the county, would not have to endure Malibu’s planning process, there is a faint hope it will be rebuilt.