With over 18,000 structures destroyed in the recent Los Angeles wildfires that forced over 200,000 to evacuate, all eyes are looking to both developers and architects for answers on how to rebuild not just quickly, but smartly.

Here’s a look at six companies, many of whose founders have personal ties to disasters, each with distinctive methods on how best to approach rebuilding Los Angeles and the creative ways they’re hoping to do so.

Ark Container Homes

After losing his home to natural disasters on two separate occasions – first to Hurricane Ida in New Orleans four years ago and then in Malibu to a mudslide in the Palisades burn scar area earlier this year – Louisiana and Los Angeles dual resident Joshua Clark became fed up with traditional building methods.

“Time and time again, we’ve seen down here (in Louisiana), particularly with hurricanes, but also floods and tornadoes, people losing it all,” Clark said. “It’s sickening … And just seeing the devastation, it doesn’t have to happen. We don’t have to keep building the way that we’ve been building.”

In search of both highly disaster-resilient and creative sustainable solutions, Clark cofounded Ark Container Homes last November, a building company that creates housing units entirely out of recycled shipping containers.

The containers are what Clark refers to as “one-trippers,” meaning they’ve only made one trip around the Pacific Ocean and are in nearly brand-new condition.

Units come in two sizes, either 20- or 40-foot models and span 160 or 320 square feet, respectively, and are intended for either temporary or permanent living. The 20-foot unit is $39,000 and the 40-foot unit is $69,000.

“The outside is cold armor,” Clark said, noting that the units were originally thought of for hurricane victims in the southeast, although they can withstand all types of natural disasters. “It is an unaffected steel cargo container. These things were built to survive typhoons on the Pacific.”

They’re transformed in Ark’s warehouse factory in New Orleans in less than two weeks and arrive to buyers fully livable, featuring both a shower and toilet, as well as a kitchenette, bed, desk and living area.

While Ark builds out the unit’s interior, decked with both Douglas fir and Cypress oak wood, Clark is adamant about not touching the container’s exterior – including not carving out any windows – although the cargo containers have retractable doors that Clark said are able to let in plenty of natural light.

“As soon as you cut into the exterior of a cargo container, you compromise the structural integrity,” he said. “Windows are weakness … for us, if you’re going to give up space by living in a smaller home, you better get something in return. For us, that’s strength.”

Since Ark’s inception less than six months ago, it has delivered eight units total across the country, although Clark said demand has begun to increase since the Los Angeles wildfires.

The company is in talks with several displaced individuals from both fire zones and is adding welding sheet metal underneath the floor of every unit sent to California, specifically to resist wildfire harm.

Ark delivered its first container home to Malibu post-fires last month, which was a 20-foot unit to one of Clark’s former neighbors, which they are using as temporary housing as they clean up lot debris and work to rebuild their home.

Eventually, Clark said the recipient plans to keep and convert the container home into a back-guest house once their single-family house is completed. Clark himself lives out of his container home unit in Louisiana full-time.

The company is donating a percentage of sales to community fire brigades in Los Angeles. Customers are responsible for shipping of the units, which Clark said is roughly $8,000 to deliver to Los Angeles.

RSG 3-D

While many companies are looking at how best to expedite the rebuilding process, New York-based building technology firm RSG 3-D is instead focused on long-term durability when it comes to reconstructing Los Angeles.

Ken Calligar was a prominent investment banker when he came across Insteel Panelmex – a powerful fabricated panel system that had proven to withstand all types of natural disasters – and decided to purchase the company.

The acquisition led to the creation of RSG 3-D in 2018, which utilizes the same monolithic panel system today – made up of expanded polystyrene in the center covered by a two-by-two-inch steel truss with an inch and a half of concrete on each side. The system is specifically intended to manufacture climate-resilient and energy-efficient walls of all types and does so out of its plant in Mexicali.

“It was a giant financial opportunity because it turns out that pretty much everyone in the world lives in a house and, therefore, you get a lot of clients,” Calligar said. “It was also the opportunity to disrupt probably the worst technology in the history of the world, and that’s building houses and buildings out of wood.”

Due to both concrete and steel’s non-combustible features, Calligar said RSG 3-D’s structural concrete panel system is designed to withstand natural disasters of all forms – including wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes and floods. The company has manufactured more than 6,000 buildings, from single-family homes to big commercial buildings such as hotels, schools and large apartment complexes.

RSG 3-D has shipped to 20 countries, but primarily serves extreme-risk regions including California, the West Coast and various hurricane zones in the Southeast. Since its inception in 2018, the company claims to have a no damage record.

Calligar acknowledged there is a premium for buyers interested in investing in RSG 3-D’s panel building system over traditional materials, although he did not disclose any numbers. He said the structure is meant to last far into the future.

“This is the chance for Los Angeles to be built right for the next 500 years,” Calligar said. “You’re in a permanently vulnerable, highly risky environment in Los Angeles and California. It’s not going to change, and you better find a better way to do it. We just happen to be the best at it at the moment.”

Calligar said the company is in active planning on rebuilding dozens of destroyed homes in Los Angeles. RSG 3-D has already signed some clients in Pacific Palisades and is working with families in Altadena and Pasadena areas too.

“Right now should not be a competition for speed,” Calligar said. “It should be a contemplation of what we need to do for the future. When disaster strikes, that is terrible. It’s a huge tragedy, but natural disasters are always going to occur. Our task is to keep them from becoming human catastrophes.”

Azure Printed Homes

Gene Eidelman and Ross Maguire are the cofounders of Azure Printed Homes, a Gardena-based construction company that utilizes 3D printing technology to manufacture residential suites and recently launched a $4.2 million crowdfunding campaign to support Los Angeles wildfire victims.

The firm was founded in 2022, as an extension of Eidelman’s and Maguire’s original line of business, Azure Construction, and, to date, has delivered over 100 homes – mostly focused on sustainable and emergency relief solutions.

“When we tried to do prefabricated housing in a traditional way, we realized that there is really not that much (cost) saving and building on-site or building in the factory (both utilized) the same materials,” Eidelman said. “We just found that it wasn’t much different and didn’t achieve the savings or the speed that we were hoping for. That’s when we said, ‘let’s look at other ways.’”

At the time of Azure’s formation, 3D printing had been a growing trend for some time, but Eidelman recalled many companies of the time printing with traditional building materials namely cement, which is one of Earth’s biggest pollutants.

In search of more environmentally friendly materials, Azure Printed Homes came up with the recipe of using 65% recycled plastic, 25% fiberglass and 10% auditors (including things like UV stabilizers) – a mixture the company claims utilizes 100,000 recycled plastic bottles per 120 built square feet.

Azure offers two prototypes – studio units for roughly $50,000 or two-bedrooms for $95,000 – and each can be made in a matter of three to four weeks from design to installation, although Eidelman said there’s no limit when it comes to size, and cost will fluctuate accordingly.

In general, Azure claims its robotic methods are 70% faster than traditional construction techniques and 30% less expensive. The company serves primarily California but ships to seven other states.

Immediately following the recent wildfires, Azure announced it was launching a $4.2 million crowdfunding campaign at the end of January to expedite the homebuilding process for fire victims and support the company’s expansion plan.

“We’re primarily raising this money to expand our capacity,” Eidelman said, whose home survived the Malibu Woolsey fire five years ago. “We have a small, 20,000-square-foot factory and a lot of the homes, for example, in Palisades are on steep hills so you will not be able to necessarily deliver a modular unit or a totally finished unit. We are adding equipment to do prefabrication.”

In addition, Azure is working to open another factory in Colorado later this year and, once it’s open, Eidelman said all out-of-state orders will be printed there so Los Angeles can solely focus on rebuilding efforts.

While Eidelman said Azure is in talks with several landowners in both the Palisades and Altadena areas who have expressed interest in purchasing a home, the company hasn’t delivered anything to the victims just yet.

Eidelman said this is partly because the company is finishing up commitments to previous customers but primarily because many victims have still not obtained building permits that would allow for new construction.

“I really think it’s not going to be choosing, it’s going to be kind of who is ready to go first in the book,” Eidelman said. “And I think that people who can get permits fastest will get their homes built fastest.”

The crowdfunding campaign is scheduled to close on April 30. Throughout Azure’s history, Eidelman said it has raised $6 million.

Form Found Design

Ron Culver and Joseph Sarafian are the cofounders of Form Found Design, a Venice-based architecture firm that utilizes technology.

“As architects, we approach every project from an open-minded design perspective,” Sarafian said. “Rather than prescribing a particular structural system from the beginning of the project, we endeavor to understand the client’s needs and site conditions, then we weave together a cohesive design that incorporates the appropriate building systems and materials.”

The company gained prominence for its 15-foot MARS Pavilion commissioned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, made completely from refurbished robots out of concrete fabric forms, in 2017 and today is looking for ways to get creative when it comes to not just rebuilding, but redesigning, Los Angeles.

In March, the company hosted a webinar for fire victims interested in rebuilding their homes where Culver and Sarafian presented three partially prefabricated building systems – metal buildings and panels, computational framing, and cross laminated timber – all of which FFD claims are inherently fire-resilient and also reduce both waste and time on the jobsite.

“The cost of steel is always the variable,” Sarafian said. “Depending on wood costs versus steel, that can really play a role. But I think a lot of fire victims are going to want to rebuild with something more resilient than wood framing and a non-combustible material like steel I think is a good option for that.”

The company designed The Cleft House in Venice in 2009 – built with a metal building frame and roof structure from Rigid Global Buildings and insulated steel panels – which FFD references as one of the prototypes it is using as a system for fire rebuilds due to its non-combustible construction, rapid assembly and low cost.

Another FFD is LuminOCity, a two-bedroom, two-bath zero net energy ADU in Placentia made from light gauge steel, in collaboration with Orange Coast College and University of California, Irvine for the 2023 Orange County Sustainability Decathalon. It opened in 2025.

FFD said the technologies used in both The Cleft House and LuminOCity could be used as a way to rebuild Los Angeles and rebuild faster. Sarafian said that, unlike wood framing which typically takes at least two to three weeks on a custom build project, FFD can frame steel homes in about three days depending on their size.

“What we’re trying to do is find the appropriate technology to the project for the problem at hand,” Culver said. “We’ve been doing a lot of research to try to help homeowners who are suffering from fires and seeing how we can rebuild and if we can get a higher percentage of the buildings to be non-combustible … Not only are we looking to build such that each home is preserved, but it’s also not creating damage towards the homes downwind of them … We like to think with all the available resources at hand to see how we can best serve people.”

FFD is currently conducting fire resilient research and is in discussion with five families in the Palisades to redesign their homes, as well as two non-profits in Altadena about the potential of using their systems to design rebuilds there.

“We’re interested in using the forces of nature to sculpt the architecture we create, whether it’s through material efficiency, using advanced technology to use form finding, allowing the computer to generate form (etcetera), those are the kind of ideas that we’re interested in,” Sarafian said. “That’s really our thesis.”

KB Home

Although not directly related to Los Angeles rebuilding efforts, KB Home’s new wildfire resilient community “Dixon Trail” in Escondido may set the standard of what can be rebuilt in both Palisades and Altadena to reduce the risk of wildfire damage moving forward.

The Westwood-based developer claims Dixon Trail is the nation’s first wildfire-resistant neighborhood – built with mitigation strategies based on research from the independent nonprofit Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety.

“We were on the ground the week after (the Los Angeles wildfires) in Altadena and Pasadena, looking at how to narrow the paths of destruction,” Roy Wright, president and chief executive of IBHS, said. “When we go out after a major conflagration, we’re not looking at what burnt down; we’re looking at what survived and trying to build those bridges.”

Once finished, Dixon Trail will feature 64 homes for sale, each of which will include the installation of fire-rated roofs, noncombustible gutters, upgraded windows and doors, ember- and flame-resistant vents, an all-metal fence system, as well as the creation of a five-foot buffer around structures – all derived from IBHS’ testing of full-scale structures to fires and wildfire ember storms. In total, the development spans 36.2 acres.

“There’s just as much enforcement about maintaining the defensible space in the wildfire prepared characteristics of each home and each parcel because the entire community of the 64 homes are individually designated as wildfire prepared homes,” Wright said. “They are then collectively designated as a wildfire prepared community.”

KB Home has currently closed and delivered six homes and is under construction on another 26, all of which are made to order and customizable to buyer preferences. It began the permitting process in May and expects to unwrap the entire community by mid-next year.

Prior to move-in, each home will be certified by IBHS for a final wildfire prepared home designation. Upon completion of Dixon Trail, IBHS will evaluate the entire community and if all requirements are met, it will be designated as the first wildfire prepared neighborhood.

While KB Home could not comment on home sales and how Dixon Trail compares in price to the company’s other developments, it did hint at there being a slight surcharge to this type of development, and that the company is only considering this methodism in high fire zone communities.

Dixon Trail will serve as a model for the research and development of wildfire mitigation actions, at both the home and neighborhood level, according to KB Home, in order to take action and reduce the likelihood of initial ignitions.

KB Home did not say whether it would be partaking in any specific efforts to rebuild Los Angeles.

Steve Ruffner, president and regional general manager of KB Home Coastal and Inland Empire, however, said the company was looking to “learn as much as we can from this and try and bring the cost down to a neutral situation so that when we build under the Chapter 7A code in a high fire zone, we can give our customers the most security for their money.”

Cover Technologies

Modular construction has been on the rise for quite some time now due to its cost and time savings, but Alexis Rivas, cofounder and chief executive of Gardena-based modular construction firm Cover Technologies Inc., thinks modular design will be key in streamlining Los Angeles’ rebuilding efforts.

“The more I learned about home building, the more I realized that it’s a very time-consuming, expensive and unpredictable process,” Rivas said on his choice to start Cover in 2014. “When you look at almost everything else in our lives, whether it’s cars, electronics (or) furniture, they’re made in a factory. And as a result of being made in a factory, they’re both high quality and abundantly available.”

Cover produces all-steel, custom modular housing units out of its 80,000-square-foot factory in Gardena and oversees the construction process from start to finish – including design, permitting, manufacturing and installation.

“We’re not just trying to make homes faster, we’re trying to make homes that are actually better, and safety is a big part of that,” Rivas said. “Steel is non-combustible and that really helps in terms of fires. Another thing is actually seismic. Steel is great when it comes to seismic because it’s incredibly strong and it’s lightweight.”

Rivas said Cover has talked to over 300 individuals impacted by the most recent Los Angeles wildfires and is currently in the permitting process on several to rebuild homes on previously destroyed lots in both fire zones.

The company’s can accommodate 500-square-foot ADUs all the way to 4,000-square-foot six-bed, four-and-a-half bath homes.

“The system is incredibly versatile, but there are limitations,” Rivas said. “I think the best way to think about it is kind of like Legos. We have our set of pre-engineered, pre-designed Lego blocks – wall panels, roof panels, floor panels, window panels. Those are pre-designed, pre-engineered and you can combine those panels to create a very, very wide range of layouts.”

The manufacturing itself takes roughly three to eight weeks, but the units can take upwards of nine months to be made, depending on how quickly customers make design choices. All homes are inspired by mid-century modern luxury aesthetics.

“I think (modular) is the answer to building generally,” Rivas said. “I don’t think it’s only for rebuilding. If you look at conventional construction, it’s a very slow, very expensive, very unpredictable process and you can get really incredible quality fast with our approach. I think, in general, that’s valuable, but I do think it’s especially valuable when you’re trying to get back into your home quickly.”

Unlike some of the other companies that require buyers to have a permit prior to signing on, Rivas said Cover works in parallel and helps customers through the entire rebuilding process.

While designs are fully customizable, and costs can vary, Rivas said, on average, Cover homes cost between $600 to $800 per square foot. Typically, Cover charges $4,500 for its design study, but Rivas said the company is temporarily lowering this fee to $500 for wildfire victims.