Building officials have the same goal as us - to create buildings that are safe for our communities, families and children, present and future. This article gives @countyofla a hard time, but it’s important to know that they’ve been meeting with us and are genuinely interested in finding a way to make engineered adobe and compressed earth block construction available in Los Angeles County. We are happy for the partnership and look forward to working together to make Los Angeles a leader in fire-resistant carbon beneficial construction.
Major Repairs is a one day conference on reparative practices in architecture.
Against the backdrop of an ongoing ecological emergency, the city is rebuilding itself—in the same way it has for the past century: buying into carbon-effusive material supply chains; advancing individual property development over alternative ownership models; hardening or controlling natural landscape; and incorporating toxic manufactured materials into housing without consideration of end of life. How do we repair the spaces we inherit, if we continue with the very architectural habits that led us to this disaster? Major Repairs is a conference addressing reparative practices, bringing together historical and reflective perspectives on the architectural and spatial responses to wildfire. Speakers and participants will elaborate on the new systems, practices, and habits needed to survive the ecological consequences of 20th-century modernist and postmodernist experiments. From the documentary history of fire management to alternative development models, from bioregional material inventories to feminist ethics of care, Major Repairs addresses the current rebuild efforts by centering non-extractive architectural perspectives and ideas.
MODERN BREAKDOWN
Documentary histories of wildfire by Char Miller
Riparian rights by Lauren Bon
Prefabricated housing on Indigenous land by Manuel Schvartzberg-Carrio
BIOREGIONAL MATERIAL INVENTORIES
An overture by Jia Yi Gu
Adobe in building codes by Ben Loescher
Urban forestry and structural timber by Jeff Perry
EQUITABLE EQUITY
Cooperative and collective by Sasha Delz
Property Playbook by Janette Kim
Rebuilding Greenville by Tyler Pew
Major Repairs is organized by Jia Yi Gu, Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College; co-director of Spinagu; and Char Miller, Director of Environmental Analysis; W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College.
The program is presented by Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design with Donatella Cusma, Monica Lamela and Lorena Garcia.
Support for Major Repairs is made possible by the Harvey Mudd College Innovation Accelerator Seed Grant. Graphic design by Christina Huang.
