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Fire-resilient buildings don’t have to be soulless, formulaic bunkers, according to the student designers of the Resilient Futures Lab, a summer studio at Pasadena’s ArtCenter College. The 14-week class focused on imagining new structures for the fire-devastated community of Altadena, located just down the hill yet a world away from the school’s bucolic hillside campus.
Members of the ArtCenter community lost about 40 homes in the Eaton fire, said James Meraz, associate chair of ArtCenter’s Spatial Experience Design program, who co-taught the course with his longtime ArtCenter colleague Emil Mertzel. In a post-disaster landscape dominated (for good reason) by technical concerns, he reinforced that such building is just as much about the people and stories inside the spaces, and the need to turn the page from trauma.
“I tell students: be the voice and conscience of regeneration. Create meaning from the chaos of life,” said Meraz, whose 20-year-old son died in 2019, a tragedy which bolstered his belief in creativity as a tool for healing.
Undergraduates and graduates from the Spatial Experience Design program were tasked with designing off-the-grid, sustainable dwellings that could resist both fire and earthquake damage. They studied noncombustible materials and plantings, complex site characteristics, green strategies, structural robustness, toxic debris removal and rebuilding logistics.
Beyond the technical, Meraz and Mertzel pushed them to think personally. The class visited the destroyed home of an ArtCenter professor and talked to local shop owners. Some students researched the stories and even heirlooms of families who had lost their homes. Others leaned into personal connections: relatives who’d suffered losses, or other close ties to the neighborhood.
“It’s about really keeping an eye on who we’re building for,” said Mertzel. “At its best, rebuilding is going to be a really idiosyncratic, individual process.”
Designers also built on lessons provided by the unique edifices of Altadena, like its multigenerational compounds, artist colonies, Craftsman bungalows and midcentury experiments. As a result they developed tools to expand on the typical single-family dwelling with innovations in prefabrication, co-living, multigenerational housing, ADUs, material experimentation and more. For instance, undergraduate Lydia Liang intertwined the living spaces of a typical duplex to make it into a cooperative complex filled with indoor plantings and a rooftop garden. Cheng Cui built an artists’ live/work/exhibition space with cavernous public zones and a swirling ceramic skin that can be updated or expanded by the designers inside. More student projects are documented below. Now that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has completed its cleanup of the area’s residential properties, some may resonate with those planning to rebuild — particularly those willing to try something a little different.
The students, who showed off their work in late August, will have a chance to keep iterating. The course will pick up in the fall, encouraging students of all disciplines to explore design’s social impact.
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A community hub for a couple without kids
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Sandy Yang’s home, whose form is inspired by the area’s zigzagging mountains, is designed to help a couple without children form their own vibrant community. It leans into fire resiliency while simultaneously creating an open, flowing architecture. Hardened exterior materials like rusted and black steel, corrugated metal and concrete nonetheless have complex movement and texture.
Outside, a decomposed granite and gravel path and native, fire-resilient plantings create a secure edge, while covered outdoor rooms blur the line between exterior and interior. Inside, the hard outside shifts to warm, natural materials, including marble and ceramic surfaces and wood sourced via Angel City Lumber’s Altadena Reciprocity Project — reusing burned trees from the area. Flowing spaces open with double-height spaces, subtle level changes and large openings like skylights, clerestory windows, balconies, and even a spot where an entire section of roof pivots open thanks to a large piston.
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A hidden art center sprouts from the earth
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The Nest by Crystal Chng and Jisu Han embraces Altadena’s rich legacy of arts and the outdoors by merging the two into a green-roofed art center — literally grounded in the landscape. Approaching the building from East Mariposa Street, one encounters only the central garden, the Nest’s key gathering space, sloping toward its edges as it traces the roofline of the buildings below. (Its soil helps keep these structures extra cool.)
Filled with drought- and fire-resistant plantings while managing water with a bioswale system, it acts as a leisure spot and a place to harvest — some plants even provide dyes for arts activities below. Recessed into the central spine is a walkway that opens on each side to the sunken, metal-topped, concrete buildings, which are lighted via copious skylights and filled with capacious rooms that feel even larger thanks to their angled ceilings. The team calls them “protective yet open,” employing claddings that balance strength and softness — textured stucco, lime-washed concrete, brushed steel and linen fabric. Communal facilities include spaces for ceramics and textiles; painting and photography; community gatherings; and even an indoor farm with a public seed bank, helping provide local food, art materials and textile fibers.
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A house that grows into a family compound
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This residential experiment called Resilient Belongings by Sophie Metzger was informed by the Perrys, a multigenerational Altadena family that lost their multihome compound (including the family home and two duplexes housing cousins and extended family) in the Eaton fire.
Metzger, who also grew up in a multigenerational home, layered the project with a series of colorfully landscaped outdoor spaces dotted with varied buildings, their shifting materials and forms reflecting Altadena’s famously eclectic palette. The defining feature of the home is its adaptability — Metzger calls it “a living scaffolding for change and growth.” Planter boxes on wheels can move greenery or flowers anywhere on site. Two shared outdoor patios, fitted to accommodate new framing, can transform into extra bedrooms or even multistory ADUs. So the home can grow from a two-bedroom, three-bathroom to a four-plus-bedroom, three-bathroom home with two ADUs. To help protect precious artifacts, the garage contains display cases that can pop out in emergencies, allowing them to be easily evacuated.
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Embracing natural textures in a prefab design
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Tracy Long’s project, titled Mamo, questions the sterility and uniformity of prefab design by adding layers of patina, warmth and natural connection to its modular system. Or, as Long put it, “embracing the rare imperfections and impermanence of it all.”
Outside is a system of perforated, weathering steel panels, adding a layer of fire resistance while introducing shifting patterns of light and shadow throughout the day. (The panels can also be customized to form natural patterns like local flowers.) This skin clads a system of flexible prefab modules composed of steel, fire-rated glass and thin concrete panels. In the back a vegetable garden helps residents achieve a degree of self-sufficiency.
Inside a spacious, open floor plan is layered with a palette of textured materials. You can see the shifting grain of cedar wall panels, the smooth movement of Japanese plaster and the jagged veining of terrazzo slabs. Customizable built-ins include shelving, cabinets, desks and furniture — drawing on the warm, holistic approach of local Craftsman houses.
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