‘There’s Going To Be More Work Than Anybody Can Handle’: How Architects Are Banding Together To Help Rebuild L.A.

Source: Fast Company, Nate Berg
Photo: Getty Images

A new Slack group is uniting a typically competitive industry.

As wildfires tore through neighborhoods across the Los Angeles area this month, the city’s large architecture and design community found itself in an uncomfortable state of anticipation. With thousands of homes destroyed, architects in L.A. know that they’ll soon be called upon to help some people rebuild.

That’s how more than 350 L.A. area designers have found themselves members of “Rebuild LA Architecture,” a workspace in the online communication platform Slack where architects, interior designers, and contractors are sharing resources and information about what it takes to design and build in the aftermath of fire. For a field often defined by competition, these designers are collectively wrapping their heads around the recovery to come.

The Slack workspace was created by Aaron Leshtz, an L.A. native and cofounder of the architecture firm AAHA Studio. In the days after the fires broke out, Leshtz’s friend and fellow architect, Rachel Shillander, had posted on her Instagram account asking if any L.A. area architects and designers wanted to talk through the implications of the Eaton and Palisades fires and how the design community could play a role in the recovery. A Zoom call was set up, and hundreds of people logged in. “With this particular disaster and being in such a concentrated city of designers and architects like Los Angeles, I think we all realized, oh, we’re in a very unique position to be able to help,” Leshtz says.

In an effort to help formalize the conversation, Leshtz posted a link to the Zoom’s chat inviting people to join a free Slack workspace and share thoughts and resources. They swarmed in. “Within three or four days it was almost 300 people,” Leshtz says. “So now I’m in charge of a very large Slack group.”

https://www.fastcompany.com/91266705/architecture-la-fires-slack-group