Merit Award
Inspired by the Land
Healdsburg, CA
Lead Landscape Architect: Kate Stickley
Partner and Landscape Architect: Gretchen Whittier
Logged in the 1800s, this 40-acre hillside tract of land in Healdsburg, California was disfigured by flat-pad grading to create work and stockpile areas and crisscrossed with service trails. The site was filled with non-native, invasive and fire-prone plants, and harsh, unnatural landforms.
The Landscape Architect collaborated with the Architect and Design Team to restore the land and site a new home to maximize views toward the rehabilitated forest and grassland, and the town below. A rainwater collection system fills an underground 10,000-gallon cistern with water collected from the roof to irrigate the landscape plantings, as well as for fire suppression for the adjacent grasslands.
The materials used throughout the home and landscape were informed by the restored land, leading to a simple and limited palette. Glass and steel walls lift entirely out of the way to turn the home into an open-air pavilion.
