Featured project by Andrew Gonzales, M.Arch., '21, from the research studio, FireCity, with Hitoshi Abe. Image courtesy of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design. ⁠

What does building resiliency look like for urban landscapes? With the effects of climate change increasing, architects, urban planners, and landscape architects must work towards land use design strategies while having humans and nature coexist effectively.

The University of California, Los Angeles Department of Architecture and Urban Design's faculty and students continue to unpack challenges between land development and urban conditions. An institution that focuses on collaborative research between its students and faculty, it strives to create learning environments fueled by experimentation and discovery. To highlight these initiatives, Archinect connected with Associate Adjunct Professor Jeffrey Inaba and Professor Hitoshi Abe to discuss their collaborative research studios FireCity and FireLAnd. In addition, they explain common misconceptions students have when learning about urban regeneration, land use, and ways to approach design strategies for fire resilient urban infrastructure.

Inaba and Abe explain, "the unique interface between nature and the city offers an opportunity to design a new ecology of coexistence, a new interface of wilderness and city, an adaptive framework for human and other species. This deeply influences how we think architects, urban designers, and planners should approach new models of resilience and community." Yet when it comes to fire prevention and resiliency, the duo share, "fire becomes a disaster when human activity steps into its territory." Their research and studio look to find ways that can balance human activity with ecological systems.

*FireCity and FireLAnd Studios -Instructors: Hitoshi Abe, Jeffrey Inaba, David Jimenez Iniesta. With support from xLAB Program Coordinator Lena Pozdnyakova.

Previously Archinect has explored UCLA Architecture and Urbab Design's IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio in an in-depth interview with Inaba and its instructors David Jimenez Iniesta and Gillian Shaffer. This time UCLA faculty member Hitoshi Abe joins the conversation to unpack their latest joint studio FireCity and FireLAnd. Together Inaba and Abe discussed how they organized a cross-campus studio experience. Students from both the M.Arch. and M.S.AUD programs were able to enroll in parallel year-long courses exploring a common topic. "We took advantage of the remote learning situation to interact in a space outside the studio bubble," explained Inaba and Abe.

"Throughout the year, the FireCity and FireLAnd studios attended guest lectures by fire scientists, urban planners, architects, engineers, and politicians, fostering a cross-campus dialogue, not only locally between studios, but globally with experts in Europe, South America, Asia and faculty and students at other Universities involved in the ArcDR³ Program." 

Below both practitioners share their thoughts and responses to the studio, its program outcomes, and student work.

You are both experienced practitioners in architecture and urban strategies. How has living and working in California influenced your work in Los Angeles and exploring risk-resilient environments?

In California, indoor-outdoor living is a collective birthright. We see that in the models for work and living California architects continually refine – from the media/tech campus to the multi-courtyard home. That inherent connection to the land is our source of inspiration for a regenerative approach to climate change-related threats. Simply put, the land is the medium we’ve used to respond to the increasing wildfires in California as a result of climate change. Land as in designed landforms, landscape urbanism, landscape ecology, and land management drive the designs to envision an urban condition better than the pre-disaster city.

Land as in designed landforms, landscape urbanism, landscape ecology, and land management drive the designs to envision an urban condition better than the pre-disaster city.

In California, wilderness sits in close proximity to humanness. We live closer to the wilderness than we realize. Forests, the desert, and the ocean surround us. Coyotes, deer, and mountain lions are our urban neighbors. We interact with wild critters on a daily basis. This unique natural and social setting informs our research of risk-resilient environments. The unique interface between nature and the city offers an opportunity to design a new ecology of coexistence, a new interface of wilderness and city, an adaptive framework for human and other species. This deeply influences how we think architects, urban designers and planners should approach new models of resilience and community.

Fire Resilient Residential Communities by Nickson Chan and Jean Paul Previero. "The M.Arch. third year Research Studio FireCity with Hitoshi Abe addressed the question of fire-risk reduction and fire-resilience in California across a range of perspectives. The research is part of the larger three-year ArcDR3 (Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience initiative)." Video courtesy of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design.

What are common misconceptions regarding urban regeneration and strategies for fire risk reduction and fire resilience?

A common misconception about urban regeneration and strategies for fire risk reduction and fire resilience in California is to treat "Forest Fire" as an accident that should not happen and if it does happen – that it is due to somebody's mistake. "Forest Fire" is a natural phenomenon that is part of an area's ecological system and helps the regeneration of a forest. Of course, many human mistakes cause fires, and efforts to prevent them must be continued. However, we also need to understand that humans cannot stop or reverse such a natural phenomenon indefinitely – the only effective strategy to create a disaster-resilient environment is to accept it and find a way to co-exist. Fire becomes a disaster when human activity steps into its territory.

A common misconception about urban regeneration and strategies for fire risk reduction and fire resilience in California is to treat "Forest Fire" as an accident that should not happen and if it does happen – that it is due to somebody's mistake.

Currently, many cities face an unprecedented number of natural disasters that change the way we think about the urban fabric as it develops under the pressure of climate change. By addressing the current paradigm shift and fire disaster-context, we can move away from the stiff and static vision of the built environment and shift toward a more inclusive, continuous cycle that incorporates various components of a larger and more diverse ecosystem that architecture is a part of. Through our research, we are looking for a way to balance human activity and the ecological system of the forest at the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), the edge of this territory, to create a soft and flexible boundary between nature and the built environment.

UCLA's IDEAS Campus Fostering Research and Innovation

UCLA is known for teaching architecture and design strategies that prepare students for solving “real world” problems. What are the major takeaways of this studio?

The superpower of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design is producing unexpected, highly compelling designs. Studios propose what may at first glance seem like preposterous ideas, which are convincingly rendered as real-world solutions. We don’t solve real-world problems with straightforward answers. Instead, we try to first redefine just what the challenge is in order to arrive at a previously unimaginable proposition that opens up doors of opportunity for residents, the profession, sustainability, and development. We present it as an easy-to-understand idea with clear actionable steps forward. In other words, we propose the hitherto impossible in the form of the possible.

A major takeaway is that student work can be in dialogue with real-world experts. Through the guidance of fire management scientists, municipal sustainability officers, disaster relief researchers, urban designers, we’ve been fortunate to incorporate complex dynamics into the projects. Because they are grounded by a nuanced understanding of fire management, they are relevant to urgent fire policy concerns of decision-makers. By sharing our work with them our ideas contribute to their views and thinking about fire response.

Another takeaway is that strategy resonates with people in positions of collective responsibility. By strategy we mean formulating a plan that creatively channels available resources to achieve a desired outcome. The projects identify companies and communities who have a vested interest in the proposed outcome and align their resources to get to that goal. So these are not ‘sky’s the limit’ plans, but ones that start with the assumption resources are limited and we can inspire people to leave their comfort zone to use them effectively on a risk-adjusted basis.

During your joint studio, FireCity | FireLAnd, what was the curriculum focused on this past term?

For the first time at UCLA, we’ve organized a cross-campus studio experience. Students in the M.Arch. and M.S.AUD programs were able to enroll in parallel year-long courses exploring a common topic. We took advantage of the remote learning situation to interact in a space outside the studio bubble. Throughout the year, the FireCity and FireLAnd studios attended guest lectures by fire scientists, urban planners, architects, engineers, and politicians, fostering a cross-campus dialogue, not only locally between studios, but globally with experts in Europe, South America, Asia and faculty and students at other Universities involved in the ArcDR³ Program.

Network Urbanism by Yejin Choi and Yenchun Lai. A student project developed as part of the 2020-21 IDEAS Urban Strategy Studio with Jeffrey Inaba and David Jimenez Iniesta. Video courtesy of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design.

A key starting point was understanding fire beyond it as a physical phenomenon. 

A key starting point was understanding fire beyond it as a physical phenomenon. Physically, it is a conjunction of topographical conditions, air temperature and humidity, wind speed and direction and soil conditions. It’s also an economic and political phenomenon. Wildland management and fire fighting are organizational challenges. Wildland ownership is a jigsaw puzzle of federal, state, and county property. These various entities, each with differing land management values, must coordinate their resources as efficiently as possible once a fire breaks out. All of these parameters affect the extent of a fire, its damage, and the recovery process. During the first two quarters, students analyzed in detail wildfire precedents, and in the third, they created a building design that was both an architectural project and an urban strategy manifesto.

Edited Edge: Redesigning The Wui by Amy Robles and Bellas Rosa. Featured project from the research studio, FireCity, with Hitoshi Abe. Video courtesy of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design.

What have the students been working on/producing?

It is interesting to see that themes overlapped between both studios, in particular, using nature and natural resources to respond to wildfires. Two groups identified winemaking as a form of urbanism. They conceived plans of expanded vineyards to slow the spread of wildfires in Sonoma County. Their insight is that the net benefits to the area’s ecology, economy, and urbanism are far greater than the current fire prevention policies while the risk of loss to the vineyards is the same.

Along the same lines, another looked at the health of mountain lions as an indicator of fire resilience in the Santa Monica Mountains. The massive area beloved by Angelenos has been preserved as wildlands by limiting development. Those wildland conditions paradoxically make it highly vulnerable to recurring fires. They discovered that making the area more hospitable to mountain lions - essentially an infrastructure for the big cats - would improve the ecosystem’s health and aid in fire recovery.

AGRI-CULTURE by Yenchun Lai. Student work from RUMBLE 2021 - manifesto for the future of California’s Wildland Urban Interface. Video courtesy of UCLA Architecture and Urban Design

The Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) is a relatively recent concept and more study by architects will contribute to the safety and beauty of this, the fastest growing zone in the US. One group mapped its blurry jurisdictions and planning policies to propose a finer grain border condition that includes community functions, layered landscaping, varied density and fire response infrastructure, adding greatly to the current definitions of the Home Ignition Zone and fire prevention boundaries.

Recently, both studios were selected for the UCLA's 2021 Chancellor’s Arts Initiative for the project, “L.A. Is Burning.”  We will produce a visually rich book, geared to fostering a dialogue among regional stakeholders and community leaders to contribute to a better city. The book is a compilation of the lectures, studio research and design proposals.

xLAB with Hitoshi Abe

Hitoshi established xLAB in 2017 as an international think tank initiative. How has it grown and evolved since then?

xLAB was envisioned as an interdisciplinary platform that examines architecture’s elastic boundaries and allows for the understanding and study of the built environment productively and collaboratively. As part of this agenda, xLAB has established partnerships with a range of industries worldwide – including business, technology, entertainment, science, and environmental studies – that all have developed into research projects as well as a research studio series at UCLA AUD. 

In 2013, xLAB initiated “The Future Living Project” which aimed to extract the broad but workable themes from an analysis of the long history and configurations of contemporary living. This research was supported by the Daiwa House and resulted in a published book: "House of the Future." Starting in 2017, the “Workhouse Research Studio” built upon previous research initiatives to explore the gray zone between the domestic and workspaces and activities that transform the architectural typology today. This research has been published in the sequence of books Workhouse I, II, and III featuring a collection of essays and a series of perspectives on the contemporary phenomena surrounding co-working culture and co-living culture. With the support of the Okamura Corporation and Mitsui Fudosan, this research has evolved into the design of the master plan for the city of the future in Japan.

Another important effort was the three-year xLAB Summer Program which ran from 2017-2019.  In partnership with Shinkenchiku-sha and sponsored by Mitsui Fudosan, the xLAB Summer Program was a cross-disciplinary catalyst for architectural education that aimed to develop strategies for our built environment through experimental exchanges, testing ideas, and sharing knowledge. The program convened students and faculty from more than 10 universities around the world and every year a new programmatic theme offered a research topic related to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics: Community (2017), Mobility (2018), and Resilience (2019). 

The world is facing a big paradigm shift, and we believe that it is necessary for us to be involved at the beginning of the process to define the environment and have the most impact. 

xLAB’s latest initiative, ArcDR³ (Architecture and Urban Design for Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience) is a global initiative in partnership with IRIDeS at Tohoku University in Japan, and Miraikan - The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Japan, as a part of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) Multi-Hazards Program. 11 major universities from regions with recurring risks of natural disasters have been invited to participate by engaging in a collaborative research studio that proposes new strategies for resilience in our contemporary environment. The initiative aims to create a more effective integration of theory (research) and practice (design) by establishing an international platform for producing and exchanging knowledge that reduces the risk of recurring disasters and enhances resilience. Specifically, the long-term goal is to contribute our design knowledge to develop an ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) of global risk reduction and resilience. The three-year initiative includes a series of symposiums and exhibitions, and a publication scheduled for the end of the program. Over the last year, three large events have taken place including the recent ArcDR³ Global Student Forum: Confluence and Transfer Ideas in Exchange where participating universities met to present their current and/or completed research and design projects, and discussed future actions to advance the collective work

Since it was established, xLAB has conducted research and facilitated collaborations with a wide range of individuals and organizations in diverse fields and locations across the world to explore the future of the environment from various perspectives. We are trying to set our focus on the early stage of Architecture, where architects are not typically involved, such as business planning or program design. The world is facing a big paradigm shift, and we believe that it is necessary for us to be involved at the beginning of the process to define the environment and have the most impact.