The Offering
2025
Selected for exhibition at the
Architecture After the Fires showcase at SCI_Arc.
This project is an acknowledgement that many of California’s native ecosystems evolved to burn. In addition to this reality, the world is now undergoing major climate changes that put massive stretches of populated land at risk of destruction by wildfire.
We choose to face this reality head on. Armed with research, experience and a spirit of collaboration with crafts-folk who are the best at making the components that make a house. We know that a house is only as fire safe as its weakest element. If we make a house out of concrete but use inexpensive vinyl frame windows, the house will not survive. We have a good set of tools to give a house the best chance possible in the event of a wildfire. But we also choose to acknowledge the forces we will encounter.
We propose an Offering. A pavilion for outdoor dining. A shade structure made of wood that is not thick enough to survive. A pavilion that is surrounded by plants. Plants that are not native or resilient enough to survive.
And if wildfire takes the shade structure, the pavilion’s concrete inner structure will be revealed. To remind us that we are building on a changing, powerful planet.
