Ep. 003 - Getting to Know Terremoto
Less fuss, more guts
Streaming on: Apple | Spotify | Google | Podbean
Terremoto is a forward-thinking, innovative, California-native landscape design studio with offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. In this conversation, we get to know the people behind the company and dive into their intuitive and inspired approach to design and the endless creative possibilities and learning opportunities that are discovered in the process of cultivating and caring for the land.
Terremoto lives at the intersection of today’s post-internet culture, a rich understanding of history and art, ferocious curiosity, a love of nature, and a deep trust of intuition. Since 2013, the team has been creating inspiring and modern garden spaces by embracing weird ideas and a relentless drive to explore new ideas and see beauty and inspiration in all things. Their approach to design has a unique point of view that doesn’t follow trends, but rather draws from a rich variety of backgrounds, personal interests, and an understanding of botanical and cultural history and their contexts.
Terremoto principals David Godshall and Alain Peauroi (center) with their team at Platform Park in Culver City, one of the firm’s projects. Photo Architectural Digest.
They aren’t interested in developing a particular Terremoto look or style, but rather letting weird ideas, existing site conditions, and open dialogues with the their clients be the driver of their design methodology. Letting the process play out as it wants, free of imposing dogmatic ideologies about what they or others think the landscape “should” be, allows for a visceral authenticity to come through in the final designs. This bold approach of prioritizing listening, exploration, and on-the-fly iteration above all else can often be risky and unpredictable, but this is where magic happens. While there is always a plan, improvisation, inspiration, and discovery are always baked into the process.
All of this coalesces into designs that boast a level of refinement and taste that has captured the attention of some very high-end clients like Mandy Moore, Devendra Banhart, and others and featured in many publications including Architectural Digest and GQ. The spaces they create are at once simple and visually compelling. There is a pleasing balance of feeling designed and organized while also feeling free, wild, and unscripted. The simplicity of their designs highlight the intention behind each plant placement and creates vignettes that resemble an artist’s touch, while at the same time feeling effortlessly natural.
Our conversation centers around the importance of utilizing native and regionally appropriate plants in their gardens as well as composting. These practices are optimal not only for ease of maintenance, but also for the earth as native plants attract helpful insects and fauna, use fewer resources, and are far more resilient to seasonal changes in the local climate, while composting reduces waste and creates natural fertilizer.
Our world is constantly changing, and so are we. Our culture is shifting rapidly. We are beginning to wake up to the urgent and omnipresent need for balance in all areas of life. And thanks to the pandemic, we have been forced to reconsider our relationships with nature, with our food, with our land, and with our health.
Instead of imposing our human, culturally-defined will and desires onto the landscape to shape it into often unnatural creations that require more water and resources than certain regions can support, we should begin prioritizing native ecosystems and really learn what works best naturally in any given location. We can still create beautiful, immersive, and varied gardens by working WITH the natural processes of any given region to create incredible, healing spaces that give back more than they take in.
Please enjoy my conversation with David Godshall, Alain Peauroi, Jenny Jones, and Story Wiggins of Terremoto.
Intro and outro music by Cato and Creative Soundscapes.