The January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles marked one of the city's worst natural disasters, destroying vast areas and displacing huge numbers of people displaced tens of thousands of people. The fires spared no one, affecting both affluent neighborhoods and older, lower-income areas like Altadena. Beyond the immediate destruction, residents face ongoing struggles to maintain insurance as rates skyrocket or policies become unavailable. Developers are even pressuring long-term residents who lost everything to sell their land, adding to the immense hardship. This crisis underscores the urgent reality that climate change is making fires more frequent and intense, overwhelming traditional defenses.

Responding to the crisis, Pritzker Prize-winning architect Shigeru Ban, through his Voluntary Architects' Network, visited the affected areas. He observed striking similarities to past disasters, such as the Noto Peninsula Earthquake in Japan and the wildfires in Lahaina, Hawaii, where entire communities were devastated. Ban noted how even widely spaced homes in affluent areas, typically safer, couldn't withstand the intense flames this time, highlighting the escalating power of these climate-driven events.

Ban quickly began designing interim housing, aiming to get displaced families back into their neighborhoods as safely and swiftly as possible. Volunteers from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) helped build a prototype of these simple, low-cost structures. The design draws inspiration from successful 'Paper Log House' iterations previously used in Turkey and Syria after earthquakes, and in Lahaina following wildfires. Beyond housing, Ban is also working on building a new school in central Maui to support displaced children, showcasing a comprehensive approach to disaster recovery.