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A one-day trip to the fire-ravaged area of Altadena, California, gave 19 interior design students a firsthand look at the devastation of a community – and the hope they can offer families and businesses displaced by the flames By Sean Patterson

Their eyes still weary from an early start and a two-hour flight, students pulled up to a burned-out residence and encountered a scene frozen in time. It was now late September, but at this particular house a ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ wreath on a metal fence that somehow escaped the flames served as a reminder of happier times.

Down one street, homes stood as if nothing had happened. Down another, the entire block was completely gone, with nothing but charred remains.

Casey Martin wanted her students to be here – to witness this scene for themselves. “I just felt like you couldn’t understand it without being there to see it,” she says.

For that reason, Martin, an associate professor of interior design, organized a one-day trip for 19 of her students to visit the Altadena, California, area ravaged by wildfires in January of 2025. Though it had been nine months since the tragedy, many area residents remained burned out or smoked out of their homes, businesses remained shuttered, and the landscape still bore blackened scars.

By the time they returned home that night, tired and quiet on the flight and the bus ride back to campus, the trip had become much more than a class excursion. It had become a lesson in empathy, resilience and the quiet power of design to help restore lives.

“It’s one thing to read about and view it from afar, but having the chance to hear from people who were directly impacted by the fire created more of a personal and emotional impact,” says Caleb Parker, a senior interior design major on the trip. “I have compassion for those who experience such tragedy, yet continue to have faith and strive for a better future. It was inspirational seeing how much the community supported and cared for each other.”

For Martin, the trip was never simply about taking students to see burned-out buildings. It was about helping them understand that interior design is not just about design. It’s about problem-solving, care and service. And as she sees it, it’s one way to live out the university’s mission to serve with passion.

Martin (right) connected with families affected by the fires, offering free interior design services. “We’ve told them we’ll be with you as long as you need us,” she says.

Even today, more than a year and a half since the fire, Martin and her students continue to work with six Altadena families to varying degrees, ranging from the overwhelming to the seemingly small: They offer help reviewing floor plans, selecting finishes, understanding contractor drawings, furnishing rental homes, or simply choosing paint colors and cabinet hardware. Some of the victims lost everything. Others were displaced from smoke-damaged homes and are trying to rebuild a sense of normalcy one room at a time.

“Basically anything they need that their contractor is not actually doing for them we’re doing totally for free,” Martin says.

As Martin and her team discovered, the project comes with emotional weight. “I actually had a mom reach out to me before ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ, and she told me the only thing her daughters wanted as a present was their own furniture to sit on,” she says. “And so within a week we helped them order a sofa and some side tables and chairs to get there in time for ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ.”

An Idea is Born

The idea for the trip began with Martin’s personal connection to the area. Her parents live in nearby Pasadena, where her father serves as president of a school. The fire came within a quarter-mile of their home. Martin watched events unfold in real time, even viewing the blaze through her father’s school security cameras as flames climbed the hills.

She knew then she needed to be there. Martin visited the area several times in the months that followed, and as she drove through Altadena, she became convinced that students could not fully grasp the scale of the devastation – or the healing and restorative role designers can play in the wake of it – from a classroom in Oregon. That conviction blossomed into an idea.

Over the summer, Martin talked with her father about ways she and her students could help families affected by the fires. He sent an email to his school community explaining that his daughter – an interior designer and professor at ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox – and her students wanted to assist in any way they could. Martin then connected with her students over the summer to coordinate a visit date in late September.

Upon their arrival, the first stop was the school itself, where students met with people whose homes had burned. One woman described the trauma of the fire and the long, uneven recovery that followed. Suddenly, what had been a project became a face. “Interior design is so much more than creating beautiful spaces,” says junior Ava Mueller of the trip. “It’s about understanding the people we’re designing for and the experiences that shaped who they are today.”

A commitment was made.

“We’ve told them we’ll be with you as long as you need us,” Martin says of the families her team is working with. “In some cases, it may be another year before the work is done, but we’re committed to seeing this through.”

Rebuilding a Community

Beyond assisting individual families, Martin also wanted students to consider what happens when an entire community loses its gathering spaces – the coffee shop, the hardware store, the neighborhood bike shop, the places that make a town feel like home.

“Walking through the wreckage, I was struck repeatedly by how, as interior designers, we have a unique role in preventing tragedies like the one in Altadena. By changing the way we design, through building layouts, safety features and material selection, we can create buildings that can better withstand natural disasters and other accidents.”

With that in mind, Martin included a visit to downtown Altadena as part of the trip. Leading up to it, she asked students to reimagine a burned commercial building in town that had housed several tenants, including a beloved bike shop. The project was conceptual but rooted in real conditions and questions: How do you rebuild in a wildfire-prone area? How do you create spaces that are safer, more resilient and more responsive to trauma? How do you honor the culture and identity of a community while helping it move forward?

One downtown building offered a lesson. Much of it had burned, but its historic brick frame was still standing. For Martin, it served as a model to illustrate that choices in design and construction are not abstract. They can influence what survives.

“Walking through the wreckage, I was struck repeatedly by how, as interior designers, we have a unique role in preventing tragedies like the one in Altadena,” Mueller says. “By changing the way we design, through building layouts, safety features and material selection, we can create buildings that can better withstand natural disasters and other accidents. Visiting Altadena and seeing everything that was lost to the fires made me passionate about designing with the purpose of preventing similar tragedies.”

It was, Martin says, as if the fire had just happened. Charred office chairs still sat outside. Along Altadena’s main corridor, block after block of commercial buildings remained damaged or empty. The students were not only seeing architectural loss. They were witnessing the erasure of communal memory.

“I wanted students to understand that rebuilding is never only about structures,” Martin says. “It’s about people and identity. Altadena has a rich cultural and historical heritage, and we wanted to be there to take it all in and offer help however we could.”

That help came in the form of ideation, as Martin charged her students with coming up with renderings of what downtown buildings could look like – designs they freely shared with the businesses impacted.

A Renewed Focus

The experience has informed the interior design program’s focus moving forward. The program emphasizes empathy-driven design, and Martin regularly teaches students to think about trauma-informed spaces – environments that help people feel calm, safe and supported. But in Altadena, those ideas moved from theory to reality.

Students returned to Newberg asking new questions. If people were to walk back into a rebuilt space after experiencing profound trauma, what would help them feel secure? How could material choices, color palettes, spatial layouts and community-centered features contribute to healing? How could flexible tenant spaces serve businesses over time while still reinforcing a sense of place?

Back in the classroom, students review plans to be sent to families affected by the fires.

Many students began incorporating community art, multipurpose gathering spaces and design features inspired by Altadena’s creative culture. They thought more deeply about resilience, code, fire-resistant materials and the role interior designers can play in addressing disasters before they happen.

That, Martin believes, is one of the project’s most important lessons.

“Too often, people misunderstand interior design as the selection of ‘pretty things,’” she says. “In reality, interior designers shape how people experience space, how buildings function, how communities gather and, in some cases, how trauma is processed.”

At ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox, Martin wants students to leave not only job-ready but mission-ready – prepared to use their skills in meaningful ways.

“I want students to leave the classroom not only with stronger portfolios, but with a deeper understanding of how their talents can be tools for transformation.”

That vision has helped define a program that requires students to work on real projects, often in a studio environment that mirrors professional practice. They collaborate with manufacturers, learn how budgets and insurance affect design decisions, and gain the kind of hands-on experience that makes them confident entering the field. That commitment to excellence has produced results, as 100 percent of 2026 interior design graduates received job offers before graduation.

The Altadena effort humanized the work, showing students that their training can meet urgent needs. It also brought the cohort closer together. Martin recalls looking around the bus at the end of the day and seeing students silently scrolling through the photos they had taken, still processing what they had seen. The day had been exhausting, but it accomplished exactly what she hoped it would do: make the work real.

That is why the project continues to resonate. Students still talk about it on a regular basis, and many describe it as one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives.

For Martin, that response confirms something she has long believed: Design can change lives.

“It can help families rebuild after loss, it can restore dignity in uncertain seasons, and it can strengthen communities and prepare them for the future,” she says. “And when it is grounded in empathy, humility and action, it becomes a powerful expression of our faith in practice.”