The Sea Ranch, a planned, unincorporated community two and a half hours north of San Francisco has houses that are modest in size and open in layout.
Founded by Oceanic Properties, a subsidiary of a Hawaiian real estate developer, the community owes its almost eerie calm to Lawrence Halprin, a Bay Area landscape architect celebrated for the integration of ecology and aesthetics he brought to projects such as San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Square, an early example of adaptive reuse. For Sea Ranch, Halprin was inspired by the Pomo Indians, a tribe native to the area who believed in “living lightly on the land.” In 1965, he and four other Bay Area architects drew up a set of rules for the homes’ exterior elements, each of which would be constructed of redwood and built according to the same principles. (The New York Times)