This teen’s miniature Palisades exhibition aims to create collective memories

One of Luca Dal Bello’s fondest memories in Pacific Palisades is the moment he was old enough to move from the little gym to the big gym while playing basketball at the Palisades Recreation Center.

He also remembers sitting on the L-shaped bench outside the Palisadian Post building after a computer editing session or Taekwondo practice and waiting to be picked up.

Another one is enjoying crumbled up Oreos with his frozen yogurt at Toppings after school or following a late-night game.

After seeing his community burn in the Palisades fire, Dal Bello commissioned miniature replicas of places that were lost or damaged — ranging from the Palisades Recreation Center to the wood-clad house overlooking Sunset Boulevard that greets people as they drive into the Palisades — to build a collective memory of his hometown.

“Rebuilding Memory: The Dioramas of Palisades,” featuring more than 50 hand-crafted miniatures as part of the Pali-Altadena Collective, will open at the Emeco House in Venice on May 30. The Altadena-based Foothills Catalog Foundation will showcase architectural documents alongside the miniatures, creating a living memory of places lost in the January 2025 wildfires.

As part of the exhibition opening, Fashion Girls for Humanity will donate grants of $5,000 to $10,000 to every affected elementary and middle school, including schools in both Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

“It’s really about the collective memory of everything, and getting everyone to a space where they can remember all the things they lost, and have a little bit of pride, and be like, ‘This is the next step,’ like we still want to stay in the Palisades,” Dal Bello said.

When the fire broke out on Jan. 7, 2025, Dal Bello heard an announcement over the loudspeaker while in Spanish class at Loyola High School, where he was a sophomore at the time, and rushed home to pack with his mother.

Together, they grabbed birth certificates, photo albums, childhood soccer and lacrosse jerseys, and the two family birds, believing the fire would not reach their property, and left for his father’s office in Brentwood.

Dal Bello returned the following day with his mother, Kikka Hanazawa, to find their home still standing but the fire approaching quickly from the Huntington Palisades neighborhood.

“I literally started feeling heat on my chin,” Hanazawa said. “And I started feeling like I was out of oxygen. It was that hot.”

As the fire entered their yard, Hanazawa flagged down a firefighter crew from Santa Rosa, who had driven eight hours overnight to aid in the response. The crew used a nearby fire hydrant to save the house and set up a staging area to protect nearby properties.

The family’s house and hillside yard experienced significant smoke damage, leading them to relocate to residences in West Hollywood and Santa Monica while rebuilding.

In an effort to bring his displaced community together, Dal Bello took inspiration from his Japanese heritage and his mother’s love of architecture to commission miniature art pieces from Yamato Kougei, an architectural model company in Sabae, Japan.

By depicting the specific shade of green in the Café Vida awning to the correct number of spokes in the rose window at the Community United Methodist Church, Dal Bello hoped to bring the places that colored his childhood alive.

Dal Bello received online submissions from community members with personal stories about different houses and locations. Submissions started pouring in, ranging from childhood homes around the area to Marquez Charter Elementary School and Corpus Christi Catholic Church, which both sustained significant damage in the fire.

As families relocated and lost their sense of community, with some class sizes at Marquez Charter Elementary School reduced to fewer than 10 after the fire, the miniature dedications gave Palisadians a sense of community again, Dal Bello said.

One submission included AnneMarie Branch-Winic’s childhood home, which belonged to her mother for 71 years and featured detailed vines weaving through the brick chimney and an American flag standing next to a sycamore tree.

“Our piece of heaven with walks to ‘the Bench,’ and three sycamore trees that shaded it,” Branch-Winic wrote in her tribute. “We lost everything, including her 50 years as a miniaturist and many treasured mementos. Through it all, her American flag remained standing in the front yard beside the sycamore.”

Making sure to cover every inch of the collective Palisades memory, Dal Bello went so far as to depict beloved restaurant dishes as part of the miniatures. Such dishes include the bruschetta at Beach Street Cafe, or the spaghetti carbonara at Vittorio’s — where his family held birthday dinners — or Palisades Pizza, where his brother’s Boy Scout troop learned to make pizza.

After the exhibition, Dal Bello plans to give the personal miniatures to each person they represent, and donate the remaining ones to the Palisades branch of L.A. County Library. He also plans to continue recording personal memories on the exhibition’s website, assembling a collection to later submit to the Library of Congress.

Dal Bello made sure to pay tribute to one of his brother Kai’s best friends, Braun Levi, who was killed by an alleged driver under the influence on May 4, 2025, weeks before his high school graduation and months after his family lost their home in the Palisades fire. Levi, a tennis star at Loyola High School, introduced Luca to the school.

The “Crib at Miller’s” miniature shows a small treehouse where Kai and Levi used to play Xbox at their friend Nolan Miller’s house. When Luca went to Japan over spring break to work with the artists on the miniatures, he made sure to paint Levi’s figure himself.

While in Japan, Luca worked meticulously with the artists to ensure the miniatures were painted lifelike, not flawlessly. Together, they captured the rusted red color of the roof at the Reel Inn in Malibu and the varying shades of gray and blue on a lifeguard stand at Will Rogers Beach.

“It’s about what you remember it as, not what it was like brand-new,” he said.

“Rebuilding Memory: The Dioramas of Palisades” is designed and installed by Weihan Zheng and Yamato Kougei, photographed and documented by Trish Allison KDB and LDB, and advised by Mika Yoshitake and Hitoshi Abe. The miniature fabrication was done by Yamato Kougei and Fukumaruko. The exhibition will run until June 21. Emeco House is at 507 Boccaccio Ave., in Venice.