Woodbury’s transforms students into innovative professionals who contribute responsibly to their communities. We believe that creative practice can lead to both career success and civic progress. The urgent challenges facing Los Angeles require a talented labor force with the ability to imagine and actualize what the region can become if current challenges are met with creativity, compassion, and skill. As the academic year gets underway, I ask faculty in the architecture, design, and media programs to consider placing resilience in the context of their coursework; enabling students to relate their creative output to the development of sustainable and inclusive communities.
2025 exposed the precarity of our collective well-being. Overnight, the fabric of our neighborhoods, including infrastructure, housing, businesses, and social networks unraveled, underscoring the interdependence of our natural and built environments. The Eaton Canyon and Palisades fires burned through more than 37,000 acres of Los Angeles County destroying 16,244 structures and impacting an estimated 9,600 workers. More than 11,000 residences were destroyed and 31 lives lost. In the aftermath of the fires, we must try to understand how our design decisions, construction methods, spatial practices, and visual narratives distribute risk and fortify community. In this light, our work is not solely about personal vision or aesthetic sensibility; it must be anchored in a profound responsibility to the collective good.
The media coverage of the fires, from traditional news outlets to social media and live YouTube streamers, reminds us of the crucial role that moving image producers and storytellers have in shaping major events for local and global audiences. Images shape events as they happen, and they help us process events as we move forward. This moment presents an opportunity for us to teach through crisis, to show our students how to center human stories and directly address complex problems such as global warming and environmental justice. In this context, architecture, design, and media are not neutral. An act of creative practice can be a declaration: of who is protected, who is seen, and what kind of future we want to create.
Institutions of higher education, including Woodbury, often operate in siloed disciplines that advance aesthetics, performance, and technique at the program level. The catastrophic events of 2025 identify a collective purpose with which to orient our individual work. In this moment, when innovation must meet action, our expertise needs to turn outwards and propel civic progress. Whether you’re building a structure, designing an experience, crafting a game, shaping a garment, producing images, or telling a story, your work can contribute to a more resilient Los Angeles.
I invite all programs to consider resilience by integrating community-centered projects, interdisciplinary collaborations, and environmental stewardship into their courses. Together, we can foster a culture of reflection, experimentation, and civic engagement that empowers our students to design with care and collective strength.
Sincerely,
Heather Flood
Dean, School of Architecture