Rebuilding LA: Altadena architects talk after the fire

Steven Lewis, NOMA (left) and Heather Flood (right) are two of the architects affected by the 2025 Los Angeles fires

By Mimi Zeiger

‘Constructing the built environment has to be rethought holistically, rethought in a very radical way,’ says Heather Flood as she surveys the remains of what once was her Altadena, California home. All that’s left of the French Country, 2,000 sq ft residence is a Batchelder tile fireplace and brick chimney, a pile of collapsed stucco, and the burnt carcass of an overturned refrigerator. Flood and her husband, Josh Goldsmith, evacuated on 7 January during the wind storm and fierce wildfires that ripped through communities, destroying houses, businesses, and schools, and killing at least 29 people.

Flood is dean of the school of architecture and professor at Woodbury University in nearby Burbank. For her, the Eaton Fire is an emotional, personal tragedy and an architectural problem urgently in need of a solution. ‘I’ve never been super into sustainability or resilience, but I can’t look away from them now,’ she says, emphasising that architects must find a better way to design at the edge of the wildland-urban interface. It’s an edge requiring reassessment. According to Flood, although her property is located about a mile from the wilderness of the San Gabriel Mountains, her insurance didn’t categorise it as at high risk for fire.