The Power Broker Breakdown may have concluded, but if you’re just tuning in (or if you just want a quick refresher), this episode is a compilation of the summary portions of the The Power Broker Breakdown series. You can find the entire series in the 99% Invisible feed, wherever you get your podcasts. The 99%

Until last week, my wife Tomo and I had the great pleasure of being stewards of Whitney Smith's Holmes House. It was built by Jackson and Evelyn Holmes in 1941. In 2021, it became LA County Historic Landmark #8. What made this house so special was not that it was gigantic, ostentatious, or glamorous, but that it was built for a middle-class family interested in the power of good design.

The AEC industry continues to confront our environmental challenges—never mind what the headlines might suggest.

As wildfires continue to devastate Los Angeles, with thousands of residents displaced and entire communities struggling to recover, the urgency of addressing fire resilience in urban landscapes has never been greater. In light of the ongoing crisis, we are republishing our 2021 interview with UCLA’s Hitoshi Abe and Jeffrey Inaba about their collaborative research studios, FireCity and FireLAnd. This exploration into designing adaptive, fire-resilient environments feels more relevant than ever today. Inaba and Abe discuss critical topics such as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), strategies for balancing human activity with ecological systems, and rethinking urban regeneration in the face of climate change. Their approach to fostering a “new ecology of coexistence” between wilderness and city offers insights that could inspire architects, planners, and policymakers as they navigate the challenges of rebuilding and creating more sustainable communities. This republication also serves...