Risk and Resilience

Spring 2025
Interview by Lynn Gosnell

In January 2025, Los Angeles was in the grip of fierce wind-fueled wildfires that destroyed thousands of structures, burned more than 50,000 acres and led to the deaths of at least 29 people. As the fires were brought under control, local architects began to organize a multilayered response to the disaster. We spoke with LA architect Greg Kochanowski to get an inside perspective on addressing the daunting tasks of recovery and rebuilding. Along with architect and educator Mohamed Sharif, he is co-chair of the Wildfire Disaster Response Task Force, commissioned by the Los Angeles chapter of the American Institute of Architects. The task force’s top goals are “to aid affected communities and advance wildfire resilience strategies” with immediate, midterm and long-term timelines. For Kochanowski, these efforts have been “professional, but also personal.” In 2018, his family and half their community lost their homes to the Woolsey Fire.

It’s been about two months since the fires were contained. What steps are top of mind?
As architects, we’re always advocating for best practices and expediency. With city and county offices and other agencies, we’re addressing permitting processes and rebuilding protocols. That has gone from advocating for expedited permits to lobbying for “self-certification” in permitting. Self-certification allows architects to rely on their own professional licenses, as well as the licenses of structural engineers, to approve drawings for new construction. Typical time frames for permits can take up to six months.

Tell us more about educating the architectural community.
We started a series of panel discussions to help architects learn more about best practices in fire-resilient design — 13 sessions on topics such as home-hardening techniques, landscape and creating defensible spaces, community resilience, insurance issues, new and equitable development models, housing rights and more. These are for architects, but they are also for communities.
 

A lot of this effort is to try and bring communities back together, to reconstitute them, because social cohesion is what’s going to get people through the disaster.

What are the needs at this early stage of recovery?
While we’re in a recovery stage, we’re also in a period where people are still healing. They’re living off their insurance in hotels, trying to find rentals in a market that’s oversaturated and incredibly expensive. There’s a human toll here, a community toll that is not often voiced. So, there’s a lot of focus right now on community building. A lot of this effort is to try and bring communities back together, to reconstitute them, because social cohesion is what’s going to get people through the disaster. There have been a lot of community meetings, gatherings and listening sessions. As architects, we need to be there as community support.

How are you reaching out to those most affected? 
One thing we want to do is to start a podcast and record oral histories, kind of like StoryCorps. We want to help document not only this time and space, but the times before that. Right now, in Altadena, there’s something like 160 lots up for sale. You’re going to see massive transformation in these communities.

What issues are on the horizon?
The coming demand on materials. People are going to be building simultaneously, and that will have a huge impact on the material costs. There’s a concern about what happens when new tariffs hit materials we use in buildings — primarily wood, asphalt shingles, concrete and steel. There’s nowhere to build yet — we’re still doing debris cleanup. I think that everyone’s focused on expediency, because people just want to get back home and get their lives back.


Mohamed Sharif is a founding partner of Sharif, Lynch: Architecture, and an associate adjunct professor at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. Greg Kochanowski is a partner and director of design at Practice. Kochanowski completed a yearlong traveling urban studies course with Rice Architecture faculty member Richard Ingersoll in 1992.