When the Los Angeles wildfires swept through the city earlier this year, experts flocked to the internet to dissect the anatomy of a fire-resistant building. Many of them ended up describing bunker-like architecture with boxy buildings, sparse landscape, and lots of concrete. A new building in Malibu offers a more nuanced approach.

Malibu High School, which opened in August, is located in an area that Cal Fire (the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection) recently designated as a very high fire hazard severity zone. This means that the school, which has replaced a nondescript building from the 1950s, had to comply with stringent fire safety regulations.

The new school, which was designed by local firms Koning Eizenberg Architecture and NAC architecture, is distributed across two connected buildings. It was constructed entirely of noncombustible materials like concrete shear walls and floors, steel columns and beams, and fire-rated glass. It is surrounded by a newly built fire road to allow easy firetruck access, and drought-resistant landscaping. Still, it looks less like a fortified concrete bunker, and more like the kind of airy, low-lying buildings you might find elsewhere in Malibu.

“The messages the building sends about your safety is much more like a community center,” says Nathan Bishop, lead architect and........

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