rebuilding

Link to Los Angeles Times (June 28, 2025) | Interest in building with earthen and other natural materials — such as adobe — spiked in the wake of Eaton and Palisades fires. … Ben Stapleton — an appointee on Horvath’s blue ribbon commission and executive director of U.S. Green Building Council California, a nonprofit that promotes […]

Link to gb&d (June 6, 2025) | The USGBC California 24th Annual Green Building Conference came to San Francisco on May 22, 2025, drawing specifiers, green building specialists, and manufacturers from across the West Coast and as far away as the Netherlands to the Fort Mason Center on the city’s waterfront. …[T]he event served as […]

Link to Doctoring Up Design Podcast (June 2, 2025) | California’s escalating wildfire crisis is forcing a radical rethink in residential architecture. With fires growing in intensity, frequency, and unpredictability, architects, planners, and policymakers are coming together to define a new blueprint for resilient, sustainable living in the wildland-urban interface. In May, I journeyed to Design […]

The Marketplace Follows release of the CA Wildfire Rebuilding Guide LOS ANGELES, CA (May 29, 2025)  USGBC California (USGBC-CA) and BuildingEase today announced a groundbreaking partnership to create the Rebuild Marketplace—a centralized platform to connect communities, builders, and homeowners with sustainable and fire-resilient building materials in the wake of California’s increasingly frequent and severe wildfires. […]

Link to The Hollywood Reporter (May 9, 2025) | The Environmental Media Association kicked off its ninth annual Impact Summit on Thursday, rolling out a two-day lineup of stars and activists for wide-ranging conversations about the environment. A large focus of the summit’s first day was discussing the aftermath of the Los Angeles wildfires that devastated the […]

Link to Go Green Radio w. Jill Buck (May 2, 2025) | In January 2025, the LA Wildfires were among the worst climate disasters of our time. The US Green Building Council-California, with support from Arup, has assembled the California Wildfire Rebuilding Guide as a resource for homeowners looking to make critical decisions on their rebuilding journey, and […]

Link to APR’s “Marketplace” (Feb. 27, 2025) | …So rebuild faster, you have to build the same house, but you might not be able to afford it, and it might burn just like the old one did. That is why some building professionals are thinking bigger picture about how to design neighborhoods that are cheap and […]

Link to Spectrum News 1 (Feb. 20, 2025) | More than 16,000 homes and structures were destroyed by the Los Angeles-area fires, leaving many homeowners looking for a wildfire defense approach as they rebuild. It’s a position California residents have been increasingly facing, as wildfires become more common in the state. In response, the California Office of Emergency […]

Link to CSM (Feb. 10, 2025) | Weeks after fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures in Greater Los Angeles, thousands of people are living where they can: in hotel rooms, in long-term rentals, with family or friends. …But rebuilding quickly and with objectives like resilience and efficiency doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive, says Amy […]

Link to Bloomberg (Jan. 17, 2025) | California politicians are rushing to make it easier for residents to rebuild their homes incinerated in the Los Angeles firestorms. That means waiving green construction mandates designed to combat climate change — which is driving such conflagrations by making conditions hotter and drier — as well as suspending environmental […]

Link to ABC7 (Nov. 21, 2023) | “We always like to say, fires don’t cause wildfire burned down homes, it’s embers that do that,” said Ben Stapleton, the executive director of the U.S. Green Building Council Los Angeles, a nonprofit promoting sustainable and resilient buildings through education and community engagement. “It really has to be about communities,” […]