After fires struck the Altadena community in January 2025, a group of architects and designers put their heads together to help their neighborhood act towards reclaiming what they lost—their homes.
As the fire spread across 10,000 acres of land with thousands of residential structures destroyed and 19 individuals killed, the trauma of the Altadena and neighboring Los Angeles fires persists over nine months later.
In this week’s episode of the Economic Architecture podcast, host Stuart Yasgur sits down with Tim Vordtriede, co-founder of the Altadena Collective, to talk about the process of making a home rebuild more accessible through economies of scale and how an unexpected structural innovation emerged amidst unfathomable loss.
Learn more about the Altadena Collective: https://altadenacollective.org/