Meet Terremoto, the pioneering California landscape studio

green landscape by studio Terremoto in california, peppered with light timber structures — Mulholland Highway

(Image credit: Courtesy Terremoto)

Transparency in all its forms plays a pivotal role in Terremoto’s ethos. The landscape architecture practice was founded in Los Angeles in 2013 by David Godshall and Alain Peauroi (who passed away this January – ‘the biggest thing that our studio has endured to date,’ Godshall says); but now, its team runs as a thriving collective and has a second base in San Francisco. Its openness about its values – ecological, philosophical, social, moral – makes it a powerful proposition in its field and defines both its methods and output.

Getting to know LA landscape architects Terremoto

‘It's important to our team to practice in ways that reflect these beliefs. For example, we have a stance on labour, in that we proactively acknowledge, credit and advocate for the individuals and crews who build our projects, and this public stance is almost non-existent in our industry. Speak up!’ says Godshall.

It was an early encounter with the book ‘City Form and Natural Process’ by Michael Hough, following a suggestion from his mother to look into landscape architecture, that led Godshall to his current career path. Blown away by the depth and importance of the book’s thesis, which examines ‘why wildlife in urban environments was mostly present in feral, wild or non-designed spaces,’ he decided to go into the profession and change that. ‘Why shouldn’t landscape be purposefully designed for wildlife too?’ he wondered.

Now, the studio has several projects on the go, including some that sit adjacent to architectural icons, of which California is not short of. It is ‘a fun philosophical territory to swim into,’ says Godshall. The team is currently working on Richard Neutra's Lovell Health House in Los Angeles, reconciling early Modernist architecture and philosophy with today’s push towards using mostly indigenous plants and local materials.

They have been reworking the planting around the Hollyhock House by Frank Lloyd Wright and just wrapped up phase two of a project at the Sea Ranch Lodge. He explains: ‘We quietly believe that historic architecture is perhaps best brought into its next era through revitalising the landscapes around them; architecture is inescapably a more fixed medium, whereas in the landscape things live and die and thrive and age, and we're thus honoured to bring these buildings into their next, more ecologically astute eras.’

This also aligns with the studio’s belief that gardens can never quite be deemed ‘finished’. Landscape is in a constant process of change: growth, death, life and maintenance. It’s all ultimately about stewardship, a challenge which Terremoto are keen to highlight and take on. ‘Our best projects, we get to tinker on forever,’ Godshall adds. Embracing the land and understanding this process is important in carving a sustainable path to the future, he explains. ‘We believe that America urgently needs an ecological revolution, and to do so we're going to need to endow the citizenry of our country with the bravery, skills and ecological literacy they will need to collectively will this revolution into existence.’

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Ellie Stathaki is the Architecture & Environment Director at Wallpaper*. She trained as an architect at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece and studied architectural history at the Bartlett in London. Now an established journalist, she has been a member of the Wallpaper* team since 2006, visiting buildings across the globe and interviewing leading architects such as Tadao Ando and Rem Koolhaas. Ellie has also taken part in judging panels, moderated events, curated shows and contributed in books, such as The Contemporary House (Thames & Hudson, 2018), Glenn Sestig Architecture Diary (2020) and House London (2022).