Pacific Palisades — Old Tablets and New

It’s likely that the majority of rebuilding in Pacific Palisades in the next few years, both commercial and residential, will simply replicate or approximate what was burned and destroyed.

The pressure to restore the original built conditions is largely a function of the demands of neighborhoods and property owners who heretofore never contemplated substantial time and effort as clients for their own building or rebuilding.

So the political pressure to expedite, and ‘put it back as it was’ appears to be the primary civic obligation governing the current rebuild process.

Notwithstanding that obligation, there is a conceptual planning opportunity that suggests a venue for Los Angeles to extend its reputation as an imaginative architecture pioneer, and to suggest an alternative future for suburban neighborhoods.

Suppose in the midst of Pacific Palisades we could locate a contiguous grouping of existing parcels to be set aside as a site for a new suburban/residential planning and development experiment — a venue where the next rendition, a prototype of neighborhood building could both find expression and suggest an aspirational precedent, a new neighborhood prospect for the Palisades and perhaps beyond.

The new planning and building hypothesis would suggest, not standard property-by-property decision-making of design and purpose, but rather a conceptual model that forecasts a new conception for integrating park, open space, and recreational options; single-family and multi-family housing; a recombining of office and commercial facilities; and a revised infra-structure and utility presence that improves on the delivery of services and anticipates a maximum fire prevention capacity.

The proposal anticipates a novel, three-dimensional integration of planning and architecture, purpose and use — a suggested alternative to the standard suburban building and zoning model.

Importantly, the new prospect is not entirely a departure in concept from the recognized neighborhood tradition. Instead, the new hypothesis will represent an evolved ‘lessons learned’ conception, an integrated summation of both known successes and new possibilities.

A recognizable precedent — Los Angeles as planning and architecture inventor and entrepreneur.

Let’s find a way.

Eric Owen Moss
March 21, 2025.

*Disclaimer: The advice and perspectives shared here belong to the author and should not be considered official recommendations from AIA Los Angeles.

Eric Owen Moss, FAIA – Principal & Lead Designer, Eric Owen Moss Architects

Eric Owen Moss was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds Masters Degrees in Architecture from both the University of California at Berkeley, College of Environmental Design and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

Moss was honored with the Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. He received the AIA/LA Gold Medal in 2001, and was a recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2003. In 2007, he received the Arnold W. Brunner Memorial Prize, recognizing a distinguished history of architectural design. In 2011 he was awarded the Jencks Award by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). In 2014 Moss was featured as a “Game Changer” in Metropolis Magazine and inducted into the National Academy. In 2015 the Pterodactyl was awarded with local, state, and national AIA design awards. In 2016 Moss received the Austrian Decoration of Honor for Science and Art from the Austrian Federal President during a ceremony on Hofburg Palace. In 2017 he received the Beidou Master Award in Ordos, China. In 2018 Vespertine was awarded a wide range of international awards and was named by Time Magazine as one of World’s Greatest Places for 2018. He received the prestigious Arpafil Award at the Guadalajara International Book Fair in 2019.

Eric Owen Moss has held teaching positions at major universities around the world including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and the Royal Academy in Copenhagen. Moss has been a longtime professor at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), and served as its director from 2002-2015.