evolution
The wind lashed at native grasses along the bluff, then rippled upland through ochre fields.
Rocky palisades cascaded down to the sea, where awesome turbulence alternated with the stillness of protected coves. Tidepools revealed ancient life to the patient observer. Above, cypress hedgerows shaped shadowy cathedral aisles, parsing the fields, and traversing inland. Fields met forests, which climbed to the horizon. They sequestered ancient redwoods and a meandering river.
We were back in this rugged redoubt, called The Sea Ranch, which stretches ten miles along a slice of coastal habitat, 100 miles north of San Francisco. It remains a place of spectacular beauty and abundant natural diversity, a place where nature still predominates and surprises. For sixty years it has been an avatar of environmental planning.
Inspired by the Land
The Sea Ranch was a transformational shot heard around the world, born in the nineteen sixties of a synthesis of environmental and social concerns. Critic Diana Ketchum observed “It was an era of now unimaginable optimism, when one believed that architecture and planning could save the world – or at least save the environment.” (New York Times 6/11/2019)
This experiment began when developer and architect Al Boeke became enamored of ten miles of rugged coastal sheep ranch. Boeke recruited the landscape architect and planner Lawrence Halprin whose deep commitment was to “living lightly on the land”. Halprin, in turn, engaged a group of iconoclastic young
California architects, who were exploring work at the intersection of regionalism, modernism and innovation. Charles Moore with his partners at MLTW (Donlyn Lyndon, William Turnbull, Richard Whitaker) as well as Joseph Esherick with his partners at EHDD (Geroge Homsey, Peter Dodge, Chuck Davis) immersed themselves in the history, environment and experience of this rugged ecosystem. They translated Halprin’s environmental planning principles into architectural experiments using modest means to achieve inspirational places. Clustering small houses to minimize their impact, shaping buildings in response to the forces of nature, riffing and reimagining the forms of vernacular barns and sheds,
they created a new modern synthesis that was radical yet humble, innovative yet habitable.
David Gebhard described this flowering of The Sea Ranch as “the California Architectural moment of the 1960’s”. It was wildly influential at its inception and its impact has resonated for decades. Vincent Scully, the revered Yale historian, observed that “Sea Ranch influenced the revival of American vernacular architecture in wood, as part of the reaction against the International style in the 1960’s. Moore’s buildings there are in the spirit of California – laid-back shack architecture from which even the work of Frank Gehry derived.”
1966 Lawrence Halprin (left) with Charles Moore (center). Photo by Paul G Ryan
Lessons and Legacy
Moore Ruble Yudell and its staff have been engaged with and inspired by The Sea Ranch for decades. Tina Beebe worked with Charles Moore and MLTW on graphics and interiors for early houses. John Ruble and Buzz Yudell learned methods of participatory planning and design from immersions with Larry Halprin and his brilliant collaborator Jim Burns. Mario Violich used The Sea Ranch as a canvas for his UCLA landscape architecture students. We have treasured the opportunities to create modest but inspiring houses, fit to the land and informed by timeless principles of “passive” environmental design. The Yudell-Beebe house explored the duality of “merging” with and “marking” the land. The Baas-Walrod house broke
open and reconfigured the post and beam language of the farmhouse, to reframe life at the edge, between forest and field. The house we designed for Larry and Anna Halprin, after their original Turnbull house succumbed to a fire, explored the choreography of the house as it engaged in a dance with the land. We are currently fortunate to be working on two new houses for fascinating clients, giving some of our next generation leaders, Chris Hamilton and Kaoru Orime, the opportunity to once again design with modest means and undiminished aspirations for building in harmony with nature. The transformational power of Sea Ranch’s foundational principles resonates through our culture.
Baas-Walrod House
Yudell-Beebe House
Halprin House
Taking Part Workshops: Participatory Planning for a Resilient Future
The aspirations of The Sea Ranch community have ranged from Utopian to highly practical. Work and life there has, from the beginning, reflected the continuity of planning principles tested by evolving environmental and socioeconomic challenges. The Sea Ranch is an ever-changing community. To reconcile its core principles with emerging imperatives, Larry Halprin and The Sea Ranch leadership initiated a series of decennial
community-based workshops. These occurred in 1983, 1993, and 2003. At each cycle, a wide range of stakeholders convened to renew the community’s understanding of its core vision and to refine its initiatives relative to the changing context. Taking Part Workshops provided a venue to share ideas and inspirations, through conversations about renewing The Sea Ranch legacy, while looking forward toward a more resilient future.
Taking Part 2023
We were invited to continue this tradition in 2023. A two-day workshop held in late October was the culmination of collaborative efforts throughout the year. Rather than being an isolated event, it built on community engagements including, architectural and landscape tours, forums about The Sea Ranch history, guest speakers and musical events. In July 2023, Donlyn Lyndon, Kevin Keim, Director of the Charles Moore Foundation, and Menka Sethi, Community Manager, led 150 Sea Ranchers in discussions about the cultural and environmental history of The Sea Rancg. This continuity of engagement helped to give veteran and newer community members a shared foundation and to practice and strengthen communication and dialogue across the whole community.
Scan the QR Code to view the Taking Part Workshop website to learn more about ideas and inspirations behind Sea Ranch and the Taking Part Workshops. Read the full 2023 Take Part Workshop report and past Workshop reports.
Context and Challenges
As noted, The Sea Ranch began at a time of great optimism, with a commitment to environmental stewardship, affordability, diversity, and community. While it has proven successful on many dimensions, there are pressing challenges to its long-term resilience including: climate change, affordability, demographic diversity, strengthening community, transportation, and aging in place. These challenges reflect both global trends and local conditions. Coming together as a community has always been an important way for Sea Ranchers to share ideas, openly address conflicts, and negotiate creative ways forward.
“…a search for the common objectives in our lives here, in our sense of community – and perhaps most importantly in our search for ways to communicate with each other in constructive and positive ways”
- Larry Halprin
TAKING PART: Multi-Dimensional Engagement
Over two lively and creative days Moore Ruble Yudell led some 200 Sea Ranchers in an array of highly participatory activities. Team-based work was central. We also shared meals, walks to re-experience the environment, and celebrations. We worked across modes and media, with discussions, sketching, and in situ explorations.
Day 1
Revisiting key founding principles through the lens of new challenges, we focused on contemporary questions of how core principles need to be renewed and revised:
DESIGN EXCELLENCE:
Modesty & Simplicity
How can buildings best harmonize with the landscape while protecting from fire and climate volatility?
NATURE PREDOMINATES:
Stewardship & Resiliency
What does this mean in an era of climate change and resource management?
COMMUNITY & COMMONS:
Participation & Shared Assets
How can we increase our sense of community through participation in governance and recognition of our shared interests in the character of the Commons landscape which unites us?
DIVERSITY:
Non-Elitist & Affordable
How do we address the increasing challenges of market forces which challenge affordability?
Day 2
The second day was dedicated to prioritizing ideas from Day 1 and translating them into actionable initiatives. We arrived at an ambitious set of goals and an energetic recommitment to renewing The Sea Ranch principles for a resilient future. Key goals included:
COMMUNITY & HOUSING
A "Complete Community"
A “complete community” where the needs of all ages are addressed
Affordable housing: for workforce, “missing middle”, ADU’s, and partnership opportunities
Grange concept: a place to come together to share knowledge and resources
Pop-ups: food, coffee, education, art
Blue Zone community: expand a network of health resources
CLIMATE CHANGE & MOBILITY
An Energy Independent Sea Ranch
An energy independent Sea Ranch
Live lightly on the land: revise principles for a sustainable future
A fully-connected Sea Ranch: integrate bike, pedestrians, e-bikes, shuttles
Climate change working group: study overarching impacts of climate - present and future
Climate change psychology: recognize influences and identify resources
Research collaboration: leverage College of Environmental Design – UC Berkeley
Universal accessibility: complete barrier free trails
COMMUNICATION & EDUCATION
Task Force for Innovation
Task Force for Innovation: learn from other communities
311 help line: tools for community involvement and response
Opt-In address data base
Mobile hubs: 4 to 5 places on The Sea Ranch
Menka Sethi, Community Manager, summarized how the community will move forward:
“The tasks we have in place to make sure our work continues from today, across the next ten years and beyond begin immediately. The Planning Committee will incorporate these ideas into its update of The Sea Ranch Comprehensive Environmental Plan (CEP). The CEP will translate the ideas from Taking Part into refreshed goals and policies. Staff and Operating Committees will then turn the CEP framework into implementation plans for the Board to approve annually from here forward. These workstreams will together comprise a co-creation project among all members who would like to participate – so please continue to take part!”
The workshop concluded with movement, music and sketching led by choreographer Daria Halprin and the reading of a poem written for this workshop by California poet Jahan Khalighi - Daria’s son and Larry and Anna Halprin’s grandson. His words resonated deeply with the Sea Ranchers, who ranged in age from 3 to 93, but shared a common commitment to stewardship of this extraordinary place.
Sea Ranch
A Poem
by Jahan Khalighi
Standing at the generative edge where sediment cliff rock weathered by sea foam and fog fingers
Meets the roar and rumble of raw ocean wave
Where the fluid force of tidal undulations
Shape the density of stone into sculptured pose
Place where golden grassy meadows
Meet entangled cyprus hedgerows
Where faultline river walks alongside highway 1
This place of wild edges where a community emerged From rugged idealism contemporary design
And a deep love of nature’s wisdom
Place where open space was meant to predominate over human settlement
A village architecture oriented to the whole as more important than it’s individual parts
Where a commons aesthetic was birthed from an ethic of ecological principle
To follow the curvature of the lands dancing body
To listen to weather systems as guide
And trace the contours of the earth’s expressions as lesson
For how to fashion a home
A community
Sea Ranch is a place of wild edges Where the choreographer of northern winds move tree limbs Into eastern slant
Where abalone shells scatter like seeds into cracks of washed stone
Where the vast expanse of the pacific is reached by river and we consider
What of this lands legacy might we call forward
What of these seeded values might we water
What of this privilege and access
This beauty which attracted us into it’s embrace
What of the deers, foxes, coyotes and bobcats
What of the eagles, cormorants ravens and ospreys
What of the frogs and crickets and all that crawls in hidden places
What of their sovereignty might we honor with the lightness of our touch
What of the original pomo stewards of this coastline
And their living traditions that continue to persevere
What of re-conciliation and rematriation
What of the whales migration and the possibility of connection That exists right beneath our feet
What of the barn, rec-center and beach where we meet
And the silence and spaciousness that spreads it’s wings
What about the forested areas and the tending of garden
What of our relationship to water in a landscape of fire, wind, rock, sand and sun
What of the past, the present, the future to come
What of the symbols, emblems, logos and signs
Which beckon our attention
What wise ways of knowing did we leave behind
That are calling our collection
What innovative strategies for resilience might come from reflection
What possibilities exists in a picture we imagine
In this place of wild edges
Where the land meets the sea
Where we stand inside a circle
And look towards the furthest reach
To listen for the vision which travels in the breeze
And roots itself inside the earth through every single tree
To live a life which celebrates the blessings we receive.
It took a village. Hundreds of participants collaborated in this ongoing community planning process.
Leadership included:
The Initiator of the Original Taking Part Workshops
Lawrence Halprin
Content Group
Mario Violich
Lu Lyndon
Harry Lindstrom
Donlyn Lyndon
Scott Smith
Marti Campbell
Lisa Dundee
Christine Kreyling
Kristina Jetton
Marilyn Thompson
The Sea Ranch Archives Committee
Harry Lindstrom, Chair
Doug Paul
Linda Kennedy
Christine Kreyling
Paula Smith
Ellen Rosenfield
Charles Wilson
Deloras Jones
Wayne Smith
Bia Gayotto
Lu Lyndon
George Calys
Special Thanks to Menka Sethi, Community Manager
Kristina Jetton, General Manager, The Sea Ranch Lodge
Maynard Hale Lyndon
Moore Ruble Yudell Architects & Planners
Buzz Yudell, FAIA
Mario Violich, FAIA, ASLA
Kaoru Orime
Roya Chagnon
Christopher Hamilton
Stephanie Valdivia Grand
Rebecca Bubenas
Facilitators
Marilyn Thompson
Tim Fulkerson
Lori Maak
Paula Smith
Harry Lindstrom
Karen Wilkinson
Menka Sethi
Barbara Schultz
Christine Kreyling
Bia Gayotto
Meserve Platt
Deb Scholey
Mike Petrich
Lisa Dundee
Kristen Haring
Scott Smith
Jim Sanfillippo
Kaoru Orime
Roya Chagnon
Christopher Hamilton
Presenter
Mary Griffin / Donlyn Lyndon
The Halprin Family
Daria Halprin
Jahan Khalighi
Cover Artwork
Tina Beebe
Videography
Alan Frost/B+ Studios
Barn Facilities Support
Carol Emory
Don Krieger
J Kohar
TSR facilities
CONTACT
Sharlene Silverman, Principal Director of Business Development
ssilverman@mryarchitects.com
310.450.1400 ext 276
933 Pico Boulevard
Santa Monica, CA 90405
T: 310.450.1400
Moore Ruble Yudell team Buzz Yudell, Kaoru Orime, Chris Hamilton, Roya Chagnon, and Mario Violich