In a city that churns through its past at breakneck speed—where bungalows vanish overnight— Steve Pallrand has built a home from the rubble. He calls it Casa Zero. Built almost entirely from salvaged materials—redwood from a demolished 1905 Craftsman, beams from a long-forgotten railroad bridge, brick from old foundations, and even church pews repurposed into furniture—it is a house stitched together from Los Angeles’s past. “It’s like a phoenix,” Pallrand says. “Rising from the old materials.”
source.image: Kirsten Dirksen
That past isn’t just in the materials; it’s in the techniques, too. The home’s thick plaster walls are mixed with grass pulled from the slope below, using a method the plasterer learned from his grandfather in Mexico—a technique that has stood the test of time.
And the twin towers that frame the house? They’re not just dramatic design elements; they function as ancient cooling towers, channeling air through the house like the windcatchers of the Middle East and North Africa, a centuries-old form of natural air conditioning.
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Style-wise, the home is as eclectic as its origins. Shingle-style siding meets Spanish Revival stucco and roof tiles, while Craftsman-style framing ties it all together. It’s a house shaped by what was available—by what had been left behind—but also by an understanding that the old ways, whether materials or methods, often still make the most sense. The home is a reclamation—of materials, of history, of techniques long overlooked—and in a city that moves fast, it offers a rare reminder: sometimes, the best way forward is to look back.
