Hello and welcome to Bloomberg’s weekly design digest. I’m Kriston Capps, staff writer and editor for Bloomberg CityLab and your guide to the world of architecture and the people who build things.

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One year after the Eaton and Palisades fires that consumed thousands of structures across Los Angeles County, the city is building back much as it stood before.

For the most part, new homes going up in Los Angeles resemble the kind of homes that were destroyed. Large lots with single-family homes that burned are still zoned for single-family homes. LA has not fundamentally reconsidered the development patterns that made the city so vulnerable to the wildfires in the first place.

Reconstruction is going to happen slowly. Over the last year investors have purchased many of the lots in fire-damaged areas, according to Redfin, including more than 40% of those in Altadena, Malibu and Pacific Palisades. As Terry Castleman writes in the Los Angeles Times, investors are likely to take a lot more time making decisions than property owners looking to rebuild their homes and move back in.

Some architects and developers are rethinking how homes should be built, however, and this work began long before the wildfire itself. Novel experiments in construction are taking shape on lots across the city.

For example, Emergent is building several homes in Altadena using 3D-printed concrete technology. The Redding, California–based builder uses an industrial-scale printer in order to dramatically speed up construction time while producing homes that are energy efficient and fire resistant. If you’ve never seen a machine like this at work, it’s a stunning sight: They’re comically large, almost novelty-sized printers, working with concrete instead of plastic.

Patrick Sisson writes about 10 different homebuilding projects in Los Angeles County that demonstrate new thinking, including Emergent’s 3D-printed homes. Many of these projects share the same fundamental DNA, including prefabricated components to speed up build times and xeriscaping to protect from wildfires. It’s no surprise to see many of the companies that have contributed to California’s boom in accessory dwelling units on Sisson’s list: To make backyard flats work for buyers and authorities, builders have had to get creative.

Emergent’s founders launched the company in 2019 to help Northern California rebuild after the Carr Fire. Another firm working in Altadena called Omgivning — which developed a process for deconstructing older bungalows that are slated for demolition and moving them to where they’re needed — proved itself in a citywide design competition. For the Low-Rise design challenge in 2021, the city asked architects to develop templates for affordable multifamily housing that would slot right in with LA’s low-rise single-family neighborhoods; Omgivning and Studio-MLA took first prize for the fourplex concept.

None of these designs happened overnight, and the path to rebuilding more fire-resistant homes is bound to be defined by these iterative steps, with every setback followed by experiments in architecture and construction that set the bar a little bit higher.

Design stories we’re writing

Promotional renderings for Thomas Heatherwick’s design for the Birmingham City FC stadium in England looks like an image after it’s been meme-ified by Reddit. But no — it’s supposed to have that many chimneys. Feargus O’Sullivan took the design seriously and writes about how the proposal for a 62,000-seat facility shows how US football stadium design is rubbing off on UK soccer arena projects.

Washington architect Shalom Baranes delivered the first public details on the White House ballroom in a presentation before the National Capital Planning Commission. Baranes, who was tapped to replace neoclassical designer James McCrery, showcased a design that was more modest in its details, but no less sweeping in its size. The Trump administration sought to portray the demolition of the East Wing and replacement with a structure vastly larger than the White House itself as a matter of public necessity, not the president’s preference.

Design stories we’re reading

As an architecture critic and former local official, Christopher Hawthorne has a privileged view of the factors that shape Los Angeles. Working as LA’s chief design officer back in 2021, he launched the Low-Rise design challenge that raised the profile of Omgivning and other studios. His look back on the first anniversary of the Eaton and Palisades fires is a profound indictment of the government failures that led to the disaster:

“The chaos of the rebuilding is not simply a product of LA’s fractured governance. The confusion fire victims have sensed this year in the official response is emblematic of a broader crisis for American cities. It reflects the increasingly shriveled, defensive nature of American city-making in an era of climate risk, stark polarization, and sinking faith in public institutions.” (Punch List)

Alissa Walker assesses the municipal paralysis preventing Los Angeles from assessing its permanent risk from destructive wildfires with the same urgency with which the city is preparing to host the Olympic Summer Games.

“Scientific consensus has formed around the idea that what decimated LA in January 2025 was not wildfire, but a new type of urban fire. . . . In those conditions, with embers traveling up to two miles, a fire that started literally anywhere in LA could have quickly taken out a large portion of the city. It’s remarkable, given our climate reality, that more neighborhoods were not lost one year ago. But truly engaging with that climate reality means we have to rethink the entire city at once.” (Torched LA)

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