After the January 2025 Palisades Fire, rebuilding is not just construction — it is a decision about whether your home survives the next one. My Villa rebuilds Italian-designed reinforced concrete luxury homes in Pacific Palisades, engineered to stay insurable and standing through the fire cycles ahead, with the museum-grade craftsmanship of the partners behind Renzo Piano's Kimbell Art Museum and the Pinault Collection's Palazzo Grassi.
The hardest question in a Pacific Palisades rebuild is not the floor plan or the finishes. It is whether to rebuild the same way the neighborhood was built before — and watch the cycle repeat — or to rebuild in a way that ends it. My Villa exists to answer the second question.
The January 2025 Palisades Fire was one of the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history, levelling thousands of structures across Pacific Palisades — from the Alphabet Streets and Huntington Palisades to the canyons and the Highlands. For the families rebuilding now, the rebuild is a once-in-a-generation decision made under pressure, and the most consequential part of it is invisible in the renderings: the structural system.
Rebuilding like-for-like in wood frame is the fastest path on paper. But it rebuilds the exact vulnerability that the fire exposed, on a lot that now sits in a hardened insurance market. The consequences follow the home for decades:
A My Villa rebuild is cast in architectural concrete by DGU, the Italian firm behind Renzo Piano's Kimbell Art Museum expansion and the Pinault Collection's Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice for Tadao Ando. The home is a layered non-combustible system from the slab to the fence line, engineered to satisfy the 2026 WUI Code, the Safer from Wildfires 12-measure framework and IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Plus simultaneously.
250 mm reinforced concrete or ICF walls — a 4+ hour fire rating with no wood studs or combustible cladding. The structure is the fire barrier.
Multi-pane tempered glass and SFM-certified WUI-compliant vents — the defence against the wind-driven embers that drove the Palisades Fire's spread.
Fire-rated concrete roof, enclosed boxed eaves and non-combustible soffits to stop ember accumulation at the roof-wall junction.
A non-combustible five-foot perimeter with fire-smart Mediterranean planting, engineered as an IBHS prerequisite — not retrofitted later.
This combination earns up to 50% in wildfire premium discounts from carriers that recognise IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Plus, and supports value retention: resilient concrete construction has been associated with appraisal premiums of up to 6% over wood-frame in comparable California markets, per the NAR Cost vs. Value Report.
My Villa's delivery is about 20 months from signed commission to keys: roughly one month discovery, one month typology selection, two to three months personalisation, three months engineering and permits, and around thirteen months construction. For a Palisades rebuild we sequence the work around the realities of a post-disaster site:
A fire-resilient reinforced concrete rebuild costs roughly 3% more than wood frame up front. Against the lifetime cost of the alternative — uninsurability, higher maintenance, and the risk of rebuilding twice — that premium is modest, and insurance savings typically offset it within 2-5 years. We set out the math in the Journal: the 3% premium that unlocks up to 50% insurance savings. Every rebuild includes a site-specific project-economics analysis — insurance positioning, value-retention scenarios, resilience specification and lifecycle maintenance — advisory and transparent, with clear assumptions.
Every rebuild begins from one of four foundational typologies, calibrated to your lot — flat street parcel, canyon site, bluff or hillside. Each is a starting point, fully personalised in materials, proportion and finish.
Organised around an open sky — the interior courtyard as the heart of the home. Ideal for the flat Alphabet Streets and Huntington Palisades lots.
Two volumes meeting at a right angle, sheltering a garden and framing the ocean or canyon view. Suited to corner and view parcels.
Independent volumes linked by circulation, each its own structure. Built for the larger Riviera and Rustic Canyon sites.
Architecture that steps with the terrain, each level opening to its own horizon. Purpose-built for the Highlands and Castellammare slopes.
My Villa is the Los Angeles practice of IT'S Architecture (Rome · Paris), the research-driven studio co-founded by Paolo Mezzalama in 2016, coordinating a collaboration of specialists:
Rome · Paris. NAJA recognition, Italian National Architecture Prize. Piazza dei Cinquecento, Termini, FOROF.
Treviso · Los Angeles · Baja California. Palazzo Grassi, Punta della Dogana, Kimbell Art Museum.
Stuttgart · New York. 30+ years. Harvard Science Complex, Masdar City, Mercedes-Benz Museum.
Milan · New York. 40 years, 90+ projects. Politecnico Milano (Piano), Fondazione Rovati Museum.
More on the studio and our editorial standards is on the Team page.
We rebuild across Pacific Palisades and the adjacent fire-affected luxury markets. For the architectural typology see Italian villa builder in California; for the construction system see reinforced concrete & ICF home builder in Los Angeles; for the coast see our Malibu luxury home builder guide.
Luxury rebuild construction in Pacific Palisades typically runs from $1,500 to $3,500+ per square foot depending on site, slope and finish. A reinforced concrete rebuild adds roughly a 3% premium over wood-frame — usually offset within 2-5 years through wildfire insurance savings of up to 50% for IBHS-certified homes (Mercury, USAA, Travelers, Chubb).
In most cases yes. California's post-disaster rebuild provisions streamline permit pathways for declared-disaster losses, and like-for-like rebuilds within the prior footprint generally proceed under existing rules. Reinforced concrete's native 2026 WUI Code compliance removes much of the specialty work that slows wood-frame rebuilds.
A reinforced concrete rebuild with a non-combustible envelope, ember-resistant openings, a Class A roof and Zone 0 defensible space satisfies the 2026 WUI Code, Safer from Wildfires and IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home Plus at once — the standards admitted carriers use to underwrite and discount. It is insurable at occupancy, where wood-frame rebuilds on the same lots increasingly are not.
About 20 months from signed commission to keys. Post-disaster permitting can move faster under California's emergency provisions, but debris clearance, utility restoration, geotechnical review and — for bluff and coastal parcels — Coastal Commission jurisdiction can extend the front end.
The Palisades Fire showed what wood frame does in a wind-driven ember storm. Reinforced concrete is non-combustible with a 4+ hour fire rating, needs less maintenance, and stays insurable where wood-frame increasingly does not. Rebuilding in concrete is the difference between rebuilding once and rebuilding again.
My Villa rebuilds Italian-designed reinforced concrete luxury homes in Pacific Palisades. The concrete is executed by DGU — behind Renzo Piano's Kimbell Art Museum expansion and the Pinault Collection's Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana — with California structural engineering and Los Angeles construction management.
Currently accepting a limited number of California commissions for 2026–2027. A briefing begins with a site visit, a structural feasibility review, and a site-specific insurance positioning analysis — led personally by our founding partner.
Prefer email? Write to info@myvilla.laOur founding partner will personally respond within 48 hours with next steps for your private briefing.