The fires that swept through Los Angeles last year incinerated more than 16,000 homes.  Challenges to rebuilding are stiff: labor shortages, tariff-induced cost spikes, lower-than–
expected insurance payouts, and slow-moving bureaucracies.

For thousands of families, insurance payouts have covered only a portion of what rebuilding will require, while material costs are surging, the labor supply can’t keep up, and stricter wildfire codes are adding expenses and delays. In response, some architects, builders, and homeowners are collectively building and even pre-designed catalog homes.

As residents rebuild, they’re banding together to keep costs down by innovating. What’s unfolding across the fire zones of the city is a wide field of experimentation with collective rebuilding, catalog homes, and new technologies that are safe and reduce costs.

When the January 2025 fires swept through, entire runs of houses in Sunset Mesa, straddling Malibu and Topanga Canyon, burned in sequence, leaving some 300 leveled plots cut into the slope. Nearly two-dozen neighbors decided that rebuilding individually would be slower, more expensive, and more daunting than they could manage. Instead, they have opted for a “group rebuild” in a partnership with an architect and a homebuilder.

Clive Wilkinson, the noted Los Angeles architect, was persuaded to devise a few simple but distinctive designs for single-family homes at a steep discount from the cost of a custom house. Construction for 21 families is beginning this month.

Concerned about cost and the threat of speculative building altering their neighborhood’s character, the Sunset Mesa homeowners decided to develop a set of standard home models for the group. Wilkinson developed four house models — two single-story and two double- story. They roughly echo the shapes and sizes of the area’s original homes but look decidedly modern, leaning into the California indoor/outdoor lifestyle with huge windows, big balconies, rhythmic trellises, and open plans. Owners can opt for stucco cladding, or move up to cement board or metal, and a variety of colors. The idea was to get the financial benefits of a tract house but the quality level of a custom home. There are compromises, such as not being able to customize some details, but this keeps costs down.

Other collective experiments have had varying degrees of success. Case Study: Adapt a nonprofit initiative drawing on the Case Study name and concept from the mid-20 th Century, has paired 10 local architects — including nationally known firms — with 16 families to design homes under 3,000 square feet. They are conceived, like the original Case Study program, as prototypes for new ways of combining materials, systems, and strategies.

They’re also attempting to showcase resilience against fire. All are built to the construction standards of the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety, which are stricter than local codes.

Many innovations emerging in Altadena are focused on lowering building prices while offering quality construction that respects the area’s cherished local character. This includes the building professionals pooling their talents in the initiative known as the “ Altadena Collective. “ The collective merges custom design work with standard components (from windows and doors to floor plans), and is now working on 78 homes, including rebuilding Altadena’s historic Janes Cottages and other new projects that are historically-minded. About 11 have begun construction.

Catalog housing — long a part of California’s history — has re-emerged as a rebuilding innovation. In the early 20th century, Pacific Ready-Cut Homes shipped thousands of pre- designed houses across the West, inspired by catalogs popularized nationally by Sears Roebuck and Company. In the new iterations, owners choose designs from digital catalogs, pay for the plans, and find a local builder.

The catalog offers 38 home designs and seven “accessory dwelling units” — 25 preapproved for permits by local officials. The concept designs were created by about a dozen architects, drawing on the area’s existing housing stock of Craftsman style, Spanish, Tudor, midcentury modern, Victorian, and ranch. But it uses new and more robust materials and techniques.

Innovators are continuing to test techniques, including composite concrete, adobe, prefabricated panels, and modular systems, aimed at reducing labor and cost while increasing fire resistance. Like the group builds and catalogs these evolutions are helping the burned areas rebuild.