Architects debut pre-approved home designs to help Altadena rebuild
By Nicole Comstock
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ALTADENA, California (KCAL, KCBS) — A husband-and-wife duo crafted a plan to recapture the eclectic essence of Altadena architecture while also capping homeowners’ rebuilding costs.
“We came back to a devastated community,” architect Cynthia Sigler said. “We were really feeling like, ‘What can we do to help?'”
Drawing from the Sears catalog of homes in the early 20th century, Sigler and her husband Alex Athenson created their plan, the Foothill Catalog.
“We felt an obligation to come up with some way to serve the people who might not have the opportunity, or the means, or the knowledge, even to navigate the building process,” Athenson said.
Like the project it’s inspired by, the couple’s plan will feature a variety of home designs from local architects, all of which are styles popular in Altadena before the Eaton Fire.
“I was so gutted by the loss of so much architectural character and history,” architect Bryce Buckley said. “Lots of the detail costs money. The cost of construction is astronomical nowadays.
He believes the pre-approved plans would help homeowners cap costs.
“There’s going to be cost savings in scale,” he said.
The architects presented the project in its early stages to a pack house at the recently reopened Altadena library Friday night.
Mary Herbert was at the meeting. She lost her home of 50 years to the Eaton Fire. She was worried about the burden of rebuilding at her stage in life.
“That would help me, because I don’t know the first thing about any of this,” Herbert said.
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