Issue #00005 : December 18th, 2025

Happy Thursday dear readers.

Time to exhale… this is a slow news cycle, but Mr. Thread will always dig and find design news for you, even next Thursday.

It’s nearly a year since the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires, and I remember watching it on the news—seeing all that brilliant design go up in flames. I've been involved with hundreds of projects in LA over 30 years. The city is one of the legacy hotspots of architecture and interiors in the USA. Roughly 16,000 buildings were destroyed, many of them luxury homes whose owners are desperate to rebuild. Today, only 1,900 permits have been issued according to realtor.com—that’s 12% of what's coming.

Pacific Palisades saw 6,000 properties wiped out, and by October, just 230 were under construction. Now it’s getting ugly: homeowners packed LA City Hall last week, some breaking down in tears as council members postponed—again—a vote on waiving reconstruction fees. “It was so devastating to see how incompetent our city is,” said Jessica Rogers, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents Association. Meanwhile, local brands like Kitson are using viral sidewalk ads to expose city politicians’ empty promises.

Many of these fire-damaged properties now have insurance money behind them and wealthy homeowners plan to rebuild bigger and better, as soon as they can get a permit rubber-stamped. I even know of a French upholstery workroom opening shop in LA in anticipation of the boom. Sounds cruel to talk about profiting from disaster, but it's smart business. Politicians need to cut the red tape. When the bottleneck breaks, this will be the biggest residential design boom in decades.

Keep reading to find out why house-flipping is over, why New York artists are hosting exhibitions in U-Haul trucks, and why a Middle-Eastern hotel is planting a massive plane on its roof.