Post by JPC Engineering

After the 2025 LA fires, architect Alice Fung asked the question that kept surfacing in every recovery meeting: 'How do we make the architecture process a healing one?' That question doesn't have a structural answer. But it has an architectural one. Disaster-affected communities don't think or decide like normal clients. Heather Rosenberg's research at Arup, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, documented what planning professionals working post-disaster consistently find: residents who have experienced trauma make decisions differently. Some invest their entire savings in rebuilding exactly what they lost, only to realize later they missed the chance to build something more resilient. The psychological safety of recreating the familiar overrides the rational case for change. Trauma-informed design doesn't mean slowing everything down. It means understanding that the process matters as much as the product. Communities that have genuine agency over the decisions shaping their rebuilt environment recover better than communities where experts designed something for them without meaningful participation. Foster + Partners said it directly in their Antakya masterplan work after Turkey's 2023 earthquakes: involving locals aids healing and ensures communities are effectively restored. Physically, trauma-informed design applies research on restorative environments: natural light, views of vegetation, spaces that provide both shelter and the ability to see the surroundings, opportunities for gathering and for solitude. Klein Dytham Architecture's community center in Noroshi, Japan, embedded roof tiles from earthquake-destroyed homes into the new building's design. Not structural. Not code-required. But physically continuous with the community it was built for. For architects and engineers in recovery contexts: the community you're working with is not in its normal state. The meetings will be slower. The decisions will take longer. The questions that matter most to residents are often not the technical questions you expect to answer. Design for that reality, not around it. Full breakdown in our latest post. https://lnkd.in/eX4wzzRK #TraumaInformedDesign #PostDisasterRecovery #ArchitecturalEngineering #WildfireRebuild #CommunityDesign #LosAngelesFires #DisasterRecovery #UrbanPlanning #HousingDesign #ResilienceDesign