how do california architects design a house to live with wildfire?
learning to live with fireIn the days after the Palisades and Eaton fires swept through Los Angeles in January 2025, some of the strangest p
learning to live with fireIn the days after the Palisades and Eaton fires swept through Los Angeles in January 2025, some of the strangest photographs were of the houses still standing. A home built by Chansen Architecture in 2024 sat almost untouched beside burned lots in Pacific Palisades.
In Malibu, a concrete beachfront house remained above a field of debris.Together, the two fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures, which made these isolated survivors look almost impossible. They were quickly treated as examples of architecture beating fire, though their survival came down to a far messier combination of design, wind direction and firefighting.
First reported by Designboom.
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