Re:Common

Work by Ariel Chen and Xen Pei Hoi (both MArch '25) for "Before Rebuilding," Kevin Daly's Winter 2025 Advanced Topics Studio. The studio asked students to design temporary housing and public space for residents displaced by the Palisades and Eaton fires. Specifically, the studio brief called for medium-term residential and public buildings to keep communities intact while the damaged neighborhoods themselves are rebuilt.

"The sheer number of individuals and families displaced by the recent fires in Los Angeles is immense, and the challenge of quickly resettling and providing services for that number of households during the rebuilding period brings the nature of this natural disaster into focus," the brief continues.

The studio's site: Santa Monica Airport and its grounds, where students were to design a temporary city for 3,000 households. As the City reviews options for a permanent park, the temporary city would provide housing and community amenities for those awaiting rebuilding and remain in place as a visitors village during the 2028 Summer Olympics, for which LA is host city.

Daly's Winter 2025 studio was originally focused around a conference and research center for the University of California system; he pivoted the studio following the January 2025 wildfires in the Los Angeles region.

Chen and Hoi's Mission and Vision

Mission: To design a flexible housing system where small unit sizes form the foundation for evolving community living in private and semi-private spaces, fostering security and connection through scalable and relocatable structures

Vision: Begin with a typical modular housing unit; as communities grow, shared spaces serve as axis points to guide how units are deployed; structures bifurcate through thoughtful expansion, creating pathways that encourage movement between green spaces, community services, and surrounding neighborhoods.

Chen and Hoi considered, among other things, the design aggregation of these units, as well as their aggregated roof plan, pedestrian flows, green spaces, and road access. They also addressed assembly, disassembly, and ground treatment needed for each unit. Finally, they offered "second lives" for these units: as ADUs, or as an Olympic Village energy initiative site ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. A possible "third life": A nursery to support replanting native species.