1943           Born Santa Monica, CA

1950           Moved to San Fernando Valley, CA

1959           Witnessed paving of the Los Angeles River

1961-67     Attended USC, UC Berkeley, and Arizona State Universities / Bachelor of Architecture

1967-71     Apprenticed with Los Angeles Architects

1971           Moved to Mendocino Coast and started own practice

1973           Opened office at The Sea Ranch, CA

1974           Licensed in California

1994           Opened second office in Dry Creek Valley near Healdsburg in Sonoma County, CA

2008           Inducted into the AIA College of Fellows

The values I bring to my work have grown out of my own experiences and reach back to some of the fondest memories of youth.  I grew up in the San Fernando Valley at a time when agriculture was the predominant sense of the landscape and the Los Angeles River was a wonderful source of life and boyhood experience.  Early on I became fascinated by nature, especially plants and animals around riparian environments.  As the years went by I was aware that development was bringing about many environmental changes, but lacked the experience and perspective to foresee the coming consequences.  Many years later it became clear that I had witnessed the complete replacement of the agrarian landscape with a continuous, desolate suburbanization and of the river with a new concrete flood channel where people threw bottles and dumped shopping carts.  The trauma of this experience crystallized a personal paradox with which I have struggled ever since: a desire to build and a need to work with rather than against the natural landscape.