‘There’s going to be more work than anybody can handle’: How architects are banding together to help rebuild L.A.
As wildfires tore through neighborhoods across the Los Angeles area this month, the city’s large architecture and design community found itself in an uncomfortable state of anticipation. With thousands of homes destroyed, architects in L.A. know that they’ll soon be called upon to help some people rebuild.
That’s how more than 350 L.A. area designers have found themselves members of “Rebuild LA Architecture,” a workspace in the online communication platform Slack where architects, interior designers, and contractors are sharing resources and information about what it takes to design and build in the aftermath of fire. For a field often defined by competition, these designers are collectively wrapping their heads around the recovery to come.
The Slack workspace was created by Aaron Leshtz, an L.A. native and cofounder of the architecture firm AAHA Studio. In the days after the fires broke out, Leshtz’s friend and fellow architect, Rachel Shillander, had posted on her Instagram account asking if any L.A. area architects and designers wanted to talk through the implications of the Eaton and Palisades fires and how the design community could play a role in the recovery. A Zoom call was set up, and hundreds of people logged in. “With this particular disaster and being in such a concentrated city of designers and architects like Los Angeles, I think we all realized, oh, we’re in a very unique position to be able to help,” Leshtz says.
In an effort to help formalize the conversation, Leshtz posted a link to the Zoom’s chat inviting people to join a free Slack workspace and share thoughts and resources. They swarmed in. “Within three or four days it was almost 300 people,” Leshtz says. “So now I’m in charge of a very large Slack group.”
The workspace is part resource library, part ad hoc task force. There are about a dozen separate channels focusing on various sides of the architecture profession in the context of wildfire recovery. One channel is aimed at helping architects understand how to work within the strictures of the city of L.A.’s Department of Building and Safety. Another sheds light on the process of handling claims with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Another is a smattering of information and personal experience on dealing with fire insurance claims. One particularly active channel has formed around the idea of creating what’s being dubbed the Rebuild LA Handbook, compiling information homeowners can use as they venture into rebuilding their lost homes.
It’s all serving as a kind of crash course in how to be a designer for fire recovery. Some of the designers in the Slack have plenty of experience, designing in the aftermath of major wildfires across California. But for others, especially those working in smaller firms with fewer buildings under their belt, the massive scale of this year’s wildfires is opening up an unexpected new line of business.
Leshtz, whose firm is made up of eight people, says he’s already received more than 20 inquiries for potential rebuilding projects in Pacific Palisades. “There’s going to be more work than anybody can handle,” he says. “And there’s a sense that it’s not a zero-sum game. We can share resources. We can do things better collectively and still run businesses and still be profitable.”
The L.A. architecture Slack group is not the only fire recovery effort underway among the city’s design community. In the days after the fires broke out, another grassroots recovery effort was launched in the form of a crowdsourced list of architects, engineers, and contractors willing and able to help in the recovery and rebuilding. Though much of the Pacific Palisades is on the wealthier end of the income spectrum, the communities affected by the Eaton Fire in Altadena are much more in the middle class. For architects, who are often taking commissions from wealthy homeowners or engaging in resource-intensive design competitions to secure new projects, it’s been a moment of opening up to a less lucrative but arguably more important type of client, and being more open with people who may otherwise be competitors.
“We all realize that we need to be moving and rowing in the same direction, and the best way to do that is to have the same information,” says Leshtz.
Greg Bleier, founder of the interior architecture firm Studio UNLTD, has become an active member of the Rebuild LA Architecture workspace. “For me, the biggest resource are the connections, the people. Our practice doesn’t focus on home building, so I don’t know if the ultimate resources may impact us directly, but it has been a tool to learn about processes such as permitting after a wildfire, FEMA responsibilities, and insurance expectations,” he says. “Collating and collecting data and information in one place like this with people who are effectively strangers is a pretty powerful thing.”
Leshtz says the L.A. architecture Slack workspace has about 50 active members, with some members only posting sporadically with relevant information. Most of the 350-plus members, he assumes, are there to gather as much information as they can. How long that lasts is uncertain, but Leshtz says the Slack workspace will exist as long as it’s needed. (Through a friend of a friend, Leshtz got in touch with someone in Slack’s management who extended the workspace’s free access through the summer at least.) “Will this exist in six months? Will anybody be on it? I don’t know. It might be a ghost town,” Leshtz says. “But if it’s useful for people in these first couple of months to understand the best next steps to rebuilding in the city then I’ll be thrilled.”
Leshtz says he’s hoping to refine the workspace, and try to find ways of making it more useful to people who’ll need information quickly. “I didn’t expect to be the father of a 350-person Slack group, but I’m trying to at least move the thing in the right direction,” he says. “Because this is going to be a long haul.”