DWELL - SANCTUARY
FORCE OF NATURE The flora comes first at a leafy enclave just minutes from downtown Palo Alto. Recently retired and ready to downsize, Paul and Melonie Brophy found a lot in Palo Alto that gave them the chance to start fresh. Their glass, concrete, and wood house, designed by Feldman Architecture, seems to float above a landscape by Bernard Trainor.
DWELL - MOSS ROCK
Our Focus series shines the spotlight on the details: the extraordinary materials, spaces, and ideas that take great projects to the next level. Sharon and Mike Matas's backyard studio in Healdsburg, California, feels less like an office and more like a tree house. "The design allows the owners to work fully immersed in a forest of Douglas fir, madrone, and oak trees,''s ays architect Robert Swatt of Swatt Miers Architects.
GARDENS ILLUSTRATED
Though he has now settled in the USA, and comes originally from Australia, landscape designer. Bernard Trainor began to develop his core ideas about plants and place in Britain. As a young horticultural apprentice, he came to the UK to work with the late, great Beth Chatto, and his experience in her Essex garden was life changing. “I’d thought about planting for climate before, but working with Beth cemented those ideas,” he says.
C MAGAZINE
Natural High High above Carmel Valley beside rugged Halls Ridge, a Southern California family has created a rustic retreat in the embrace of ancient California live oaks and madrones. Anchored by massive sheltering bluestone walls, the superbly delineated residence- which has won several architectural design awards- opens to a shimmering pool to reveal miles of undulating hills in this remote and pristine terroir.
ARBITARE
Where the forests of oak and sequoia overlook the rocky cliffs of the Pacific, the landscape architects of Ground Studio design sophisticated vegetal Edens. Balancing between the genius loci and the needs of a threatened ecosystem, they blur the distinction between architecture and landscape. They alternate sharp lines and soft surfaces, close-up views and horizon frames.
HÄUSER
MY FRIEND, THE TREE
First came the garden, then the house: In the California IT metropolis of Palo Alto, the teams from Ground Studio Landscape Architecture and Feldman Architecture created the refuge "The Sanctuary," where nature and architecture artfully intertwine.
Read more here (Text in German)
RIV
When Bernard Trainor arrived in California from his native Australia in 1995, he couldn't help but notice the similarities. Both boast abundant natural beauty and a mild, Mediterranean coastal climate while simultaneously facing serious environmental challenges such as chronic water shortages and the commensurate fire risks. It is fair to say Trainor's familiarity with those factors gave him a natural advantage when he founded Ground Studio Landscape Architecture,