The Sea Ranch is a residential development that stretches ten miles along the Northern California Coast. Beginning in 1963, the American landscape architect Lawrence Halprin led a diverse, cross-disciplinary team of professionals, which included architects Joseph Esherick & Associates and MLTW (Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker), in planning the early development of The Sea Ranch. Their work, acclaimed as early ecological planning and architecture, was published and emulated internationally.

Embodying the ideals of the team, the early work at The Sea Ranch was guided by group meetings, workshops, and a “Locational Score” drawn by Lawrence Halprin. As the project developed, incrementally and with a changing cast of authors, the qualities varied, but Halprin’s Score remains a point of reference. Subsequent workshops led by Halprin and more recent ones conducted by the Commons Landscape Committee have continually added to the understanding of the place and the need for tending a dynamic landscape.

On December 2, Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA, one of the founders of MLTW will discuss the nature of The Sea Ranch and the architecture that has developed there. His talk will draw in part from his acclaimed book The Sea Ranch: 50 Years of Landscape, Architecture, Place and Community on the Northern California Coast (with Jim Alinder, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014) and a recent Architectural Forum panel that Lyndon helped organize and chair for The Sea Ranch 50^th Birthday Celebration.

Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA, is the Eva Li Professor Emeritus of Architecture and Urban Design at University of California, Berkeley, and previously headed the Departments of Architecture at MIT and the University of Oregon. In 1997, he received the AIA/ACSA Topaz Award for Excellence in Education. The Sea Ranch Condominium One, which he and his partners in MLTW (Moore Lyndon Turnbull Whitaker) designed, won the distinguished AIA 25 Year Award and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Lyndon remains active in practice and has also authored or coauthored numerous publications, including The Place of Houses (University of California Press, 2000); The City Observed: Boston (Vintage, 1982); Chambers for a Memory Palace (The MIT Press, 1996); and most recently, The Sea Ranch: 50 Years of Architecture, Landscape, Place and Community on the Northern California Coast (with photographs by Jim Alinder, Princeton Architectural Press, 2014).

Image: Anna Halprin conducting a "Score for Building Community" at The Sea Ranch, Sept 1, 2014. Photograph by Jim Alinder.

For more information on the exhibition, Experiments in Environment: The Halprin Workshops, 1966-1971, click here.