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 for scraps of memories before the burnt debris was removed by the Army Corps of Engineers or private contractors. 

In the scarred and scorched communities of the Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and Malibu, bent on hands and knees, protected from the toxic ash by masks and thick clothing, the displaced residents crawled cautiously through toxic rubble, fumbling and scratching with heavy gloves, salvaging for family heirlooms: a mother’s jewelry, a father’s watch, a toddler’s tricycle, a baby chair, a serving dish.

Valued are whatever personal remnants, however charred, bent, or broken, that somehow prompt a remembrance of a cherished person. And beyond the personal sorrow is the communal sorrow, for also being mourned by the surviving residents—and indeed the city at large—are the many and varied neighborhood landmarks ravaged by the wildfires.

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 relatively few entrants, 10 in total. This was not unexpected, given a modest reward of $3,000 and exacting criteria that described the designs being sought as “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, exhibited at the Architecture for Communities Los Angeles (ACLA) and AIA/LA. 

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 corralled by the architecture writer Frances Anderton selected two winners—fittingly, one from the predominantly wealthy and white Pacific Palisades and the other from the mostly more modest and multiracial Altadena. (This, not incidentally, reduced the winning rewards to $1,500 each.)

Winning for reimagining the destroyed landmark Business Block in the Palisades central commercial district as a memorial park was propitiously Finn Bradley, a 30-year-old architect who grew up and came of age in the comfortable village on the suburban western water edge of Los Angeles. The Block, as it was known, was one of the first commercial buildings in Pacific Palisades, built in the 1920s—as, coincidentally, was Bradley’s mother’s nearby bungalow home. 

On a personal note, it also housed a bank where I once kept a deposit box of valuables when I moved to nearby Malibu, primarily to be safe from the fires I knew were inevitable in the then late last century. In time I withdrew these treasures, but neighbors I know didn’t, and I have been told the vault and its contents miraculously survived, even though the building above it did not.

The Block actually was in decline when it was ravaged by the wildfire, its roof and interiors destroyed, while its iconic façade 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.”

A graduate of Pratt’s institute of Architecture in Brooklyn, Bradley currently is with the New York firm GKV Architects, but says he will soon be returning to Los Angeles to open an office and hopefully be retained to design several of the countless fire rebuilds in his old neighborhood.

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 (shown above) that had been a community center on the outskirts of Altadena, founded by and 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 for what was lost, but “an evolution of the original spirit, a place where the community can gather, celebrate and connect.”

In contrast, among the other entries was a decidedly more ethereal design by Mirko Wanders. Labeled “The Phoenix,” he and his team proposed an art piece of luminous cast-resin glass rods shaped to emulate the mass of the Altadena Community Church that was destroyed, turning the loss of the church into a constantly changing play of light. It is clearly not a reconstruction “but a living memorial: a prism of memory, resilience and recovery,” declared the designer.

In further sharp contrast was the proposal of the firm of Tierra Sol y Mar 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.

To be sure distinctive, the new motel 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.

Equally engaging and entertaining were the six other entries from a similar differing cross selection of inspired designers. All were on display briefly in Los Angeles and are now available online at the FORT LA website.

Featured image courtesy of Friends of Residential Treasures: LA (FORT LA). One Palisades Memorial, designed by Finn Bradley.