Poster for 'Major Repairs: A Conference on Reparative Practices' organized by Jia Yi Gu, featuring green dot-pattern text and design. Scheduled for April 26 at Metabolic Studio. Presented by the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Design.

Major Repairs:
A Conference on
Reparative Practices

SATURDAY APRIL 26, 2025

RSVP

Against the backdrop of an ongoing ecological emergency, the city is rebuilding itself—in the same way it has for the past century: buying into carbon-effusive material supply chains; advancing individual property development over alternative ownership models; hardening or controlling natural landscape; and incorporating toxic manufactured materials into housing without consideration of end of life. How do we repair the spaces we inherit, if we continue with the very architectural habits that led us to this disaster? Major Repairs is a conference addressing reparative practices, bringing together historical and reflective perspectives on the architectural and spatial responses to wildfire. Speakers and participants will elaborate on the new systems, practices, and habits needed to survive the ecological consequences of 20th-century modernist and postmodernist experiments. From the documentary history of fire management to alternative development models, from bioregional material inventories to feminist ethics of care, Major Repairs addresses the current rebuild efforts by centering non-extractive architectural perspectives and ideas.

  • WELCOME + LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 

    LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design 

    MAJOR REPAIRS + INTRODUCTION 

    Jia Yi Gu

  • Histories of modernizing techniques that we are now seeking to undo. 

    Introduction
    Jia Yi Gu (Moderator)

    Bringing Indigenous Knowledge into Restoration
    Michael Connolly Miskwish (15 min)

    Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale That Society has the Capacity to Destroy
    Lauren Bon (15 min)

    Burn Scars: The History of and Resistance to Fire Suppression
    Char Miller (15 min)

  • Introduction
    Kate Yeh Chiu (Moderator)

    An Overture
    Jia Yi Gu (15 min)

    A New Sacred for Wood: Re-localizing Lumber 
    Jeff Perry, Angel City Lumber (15 min)

    It’s a Dirty Business: Unconvincing Reasons Why Los Angeles Won’t Be Rebuilt with Low-Carbon, Fire-Resistant Materials
     Ben Loescher, Adobeisnotsoftware (15 min)

  • Time to digest and eat.

  • Exploring collective ownership models and alternative property development. 

    Introduction
    Donatella Cusma, LA Forum

    Prefabricated Housing on Indigenous Land 
    Manuel Shvartzberg-Carrio (15 min)

    Collective and Cooperative 
    Sascha Delz (15 min)

    Property Playbook
    Janette Kim (15 min)

    Re]Building - Repair and Regeneration in Greenville CA
    Tyler Pew (15 min)

  • A closing conversation with audience.

  • A reception and gathering to close out the day.

SPEAKERS

SPEAKERS

01. MODERN BREAKDOWN

  • Michael Connolly Miskwish is a citizen of the Campo Kumeyaay Nation. He has worked extensively in environmental policy and environmental science, and has written on topics including tribal economics, Kumeyaay history, cosmology, and resource management. He is currently a PhD student at UCSD in Sociocultural Anthropology and a consultant to Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association.

  • Lauren Bon is an environmental artist from Los Angeles, CA. Her practice, Metabolic Studio, explores self-sustaining and self-diversifying systems of exchange that feed emergent properties that regenerate the life web. Her studio’s current work, Bending the River, aims to utilize Los Angeles’ first private water right to deliver 106-acre feet of water annually from the LA River to over 50 acres of land in the historic core of downtown.

  • Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College in Claremont CA. An award-winning teacher and writer, Miller’s work reflects his fascination with all things environmental. Classes on U.S. environmental history, Water in the U.S. West, and public-lands management, like those on urbanization and fire, have deeply informed his writing and his community engagements.Item description

02. BIOREGIONAL
MATERIAL INVENTORY

  • Kate Yeh CHIU is a designer and arts organizer. She is currently the Executive Director of Materials & Applications, Editor-At-Large of the Avery Review, and half of the collaboration yyyy-mm-dd. She teaches at the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

  • Jia Yi Gu is an architectural historian, curator, designer and small arts organizer working on histories of knowledge production through the lens of media studies, cultural techniques, and material cultures. She is Assistant Professor of Architecture at Harvey Mudd College and co-director of Spinagu. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Feminist Center for Creative Work and the advisory board of homeLA.

  • Ben Loescher is a founding Principal at Loescher Meachem Architects, where his work focuses on the adaptive reuse of existing buildings, high-performance workplace design for the film, television, and media industries, and innovation in earthen construction. In 2009, he created Adobeisnotsoftware, the firm’s advocacy arm, to inform, enable, and advance adobe construction in California..

  • JEFF PERRY is the founder of Angel City Lumber, a lumber yard and store in Boyle Heights that sources wood exclusively from fallen trees in L.A. County. Angel City Lumber’s purpose is to reconnect Los Angeles residents with their community trees by making wood products out of local fallen wood, reinstilling a sense of honor and ensuring these trees’ stories live on with gratitude.

03. EQUITABLE EQUITY

  • Manuel Shvartzberg-Carrio researches the architectural and urban history of modernism in the Americas with a focus on technology, law, geopolitics, labor, and capitalism across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the University of California, San Diego where he is also co-director of the Just Transitions Initiative, member of the Indigenous Futures Institute, and faculty in the Design Lab. 

  • SASCHA DELZ is an architect and researcher working at the intersection of architecture, urban design, and urban studies. Engaging with contemporary urbanization processes, his research focuses on how specific political-economic frameworks influence the manifestation of architecture, urban form, and living environments. Delz is an assistant professor at the University of Southern California School of Architecture.

  • Janette Komoda Kim is Associate Professor of Architecture at California College of the Arts, where she co-directs the Urban Works Agency research lab. She is also founding principal of the design practice All of the Above. Kim’s work focuses on climate risk. She works in partnership with community-based organizations and municipal agencies to realize a more equitable redistribution of land and resources.

  • Tyler Pew  is a designer, builder, and founder of LMNOP Design Inc., a design-build studio operating at the intersection of architecture, fabrication, and community engagement. Raised in a rural logging town in Northern California, Tyler works between traditional craft and contemporary technologies, with a focus on post-disaster recovery, place-based design, and bioregional material strategies.

Major Repairs is organized by Jia Yi Gu, Assistant Professor, Harvey Mudd College; co-director of Spinagu; and Char Miller, Director of Environmental Analysis; W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College.

The program is presented by Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design with Donatella Cusma, Monica Lamela and Lorena Garcia.

Support for Major Repairs is made possible by the Harvey Mudd College Innovation Accelerator Seed Grant. Graphic design by Christina Huang.