Inside the LA Studio—Terremoto - 1.25 PDH (LA CES/non-HSW)

Terremoto is a twenty-six person landscape architecture studio with offices in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Terremoto creates well built, site-specific landscapes that challenge historical and contemporary landscape construction methods, materials, and formal conventions.

Terremoto views gardens and landscapes as expressions of the wider culture in which they exist, and thus regardless of a project's scale or typology, aims to create environments that are aesthetically, ecologically, and metaphysically productive. An unabashed recognition of the importance of labor and a celebration of process permeates deeply throughout their practice, writing and built-work.

Learning objectives:

To detail the values and principles that guide Terremoto's practice, both within their non-traditional internal studio culture + structure and how these values duly manifest in built work.
To explore the studio's constant self-interrogation regarding design practice, labor, maintenance and care.
To describe Terremoto's design ethos towards a more intimate and modest approach to garden-making and how to bring planting, materials, and labor closer together.
To discuss both the challenges and opportunities the firm is finding as it transitions from "small and scrappy" to a mid-sized office; the beauty and complexity of figuring out how to stay true to the original spirit of the office amidst growth.

David Godshall, ASLA

Principal / co-Founder

TERREMOTO

David is a Principal at TERREMOTO, a formally and conceptually adventurous office for Landscape Architecture with offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. TERREMOTO creates well built, site-specific landscapes that respond to client needs while simultaneously challenging historical + contemporary landscape construction methods, materials, and formal conventions. Our design approach is post-internet, critically-regionalist, and respectfully inflammatory.

Jennifer Jones, ASLA

Partner

Terremoto

Jenny Jones is a Partner at Terremoto, a landscape design firm based in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Terremoto approaches landscape and garden-making with an experimental, hands-on approach, with projects spanning residential, institutional, commercial, private and public. Terremoto has also engaged with community work through Test Plot, an ongoing collaborative experiment in shared land stewardship. Through Test Plot, as well as Terremoto’s Land and Labor internal working group, we seek to strengthen the ethics of Land Care in the landscape industry and in our culture more broadly.

Alain Peauroi

Co-Founder and Partner

Terremoto

Alain Peauroi is a Co-Founder at Terremoto and co-leads the San Francisco office, with a strong background in the construction process. Before starting Terremoto Alain was responsible for the construction of many large scale and complex projects including San Diego Waterfront Park, Golden Gate Bridge Plaza and Lands End in Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Since starting Terremoto he has worked such projects as Scribe Winery, EQ Denver Plaza and many residental projects of various scales.

Alain has a bachelors degree in Landscape Architecture from Cal Poly SLO and a masters degree in Industrial Design from Design Academy, Eindhoven NL.

Story Wiggins

Partner

Terremoto

Story Wiggins is landscape architect with a background in historic preservation and land stewardship. Story received a Masters in Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley and a BA in Historic Preservation and French from the College of Charleston. During her time at UC Berkeley, she worked for the National Park Service in their Cultural Landscape Program.
Story joined Terremoto’s San Francisco office in 2016. Story is co-lead of the studio’s ‘Land and Labor’ internal working group, which advocates for the building and gardening trades and tradespeople that make our projects possible.