“When Kate and Vera started the company, they deliberately gave it the name Arterra versus using their names,” says Gretchen Whittier, a partner at Arterra Landscape Architects. “The intention was that the company was going to be bigger than either of them.” Arterra — a combination...
“I never like the way our buildings are photographed,” says Kevin Alter, founder of Alterstudio based in Austin, Texas. “Architectural photography is mostly trying to describe a form. You never get a sense of how a room is sculpted by the way light comes into...
Often in a beautifully designed hotel, we find ourselves gazing around and wishing we could replicate the experience at home. It’s rare to find an AIA award-winning architect who marries residential design with interior design, but at Daniel Joseph Chenin, Ltd. the team has experience...
“I always wanted to have them design a house for me,” says Candy Spitzer of her friends, Juan Miró and Miguel Rivera of Miró Rivera Architects. “But as they were getting more famous, I realized that probably wasn’t going to happen.” [caption id="attachment_19478" align="aligncenter" width="500"] The...
When the owners of a parcel on Santa Barbara’s vast, historic Hollister Ranch asked Dan Weber and Steve Willson to design a guest house, they suggested the architects hike up to the site, eschewing the usual dirt road, to take a first look. Fifteen-minutes, a...
Some architects say the fun of problem-solving keeps their practices vital. But those at Prentiss Balance Wickline (PBW) say that it’s finding a site’s potential that excites them. That may sound like an optimistic way of expressing the same concept, but after a discussion with...
Jim Verdone’s mantra is “less is more.” At Verdone Landscape Architects in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he’s gained a following for creating artful landscapes that present themselves as timeless and natural: Water might tumble down moss rocks, boulders lie along a driveway as if they’d fallen...
It was a small German art school that lasted a mere 14 years from 1919 to 1933, suffered squabbles regarding its core philosophy and teaching methods, was forced to move from Weimar to Dessau to Berlin, and had three radically different directors. It certainly didn’t...
“As I get older and the firm gets more experienced,” Rick Joy says, “we’re really drawn to that feeling of creating silence and making architecture where there’s nothing you can take away or add.” It might seem odd to describe orthogonal, pared-down, minimalist design as intensely...
“Right now, all our projects are for repeat clients,” architect Brian Tichenor remarks. “Is that true?” his partner and wife, Raun Thorp, asks, not expecting an answer. [caption id="attachment_17210" align="alignleft" width="202"] A painting by Tichenor hangs in their Los Angeles office. All photos: Roger Davies for...