Terremoto's Positive Feedback Loops

Chief Ya'anna Learning Village, Los Angles, California / Terremoto

By Jared Green

"Through our landscapes, we seek to achieve the spiritual and physical flourishing of all species."

At the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., David Godshall, ASLA, and Jenny Jones, ASLA, leaders of the landscape architecture firm Terremoto, shared their design philosophy - to create "radical landscapes of love and interconnectedness."

This philosophy enables them to build more positive relationships between land, labor, materials, plants and ecology. It takes practical form through a few key design principles:

"We seek modesty, beauty, and openness." Godshall said the firm first and foremost aims for simplicity. "We elevate modest materials through design. We use raw-form materials, not fussy details, and let the material define the detail. We seek to honor the material and let it be itself." Julie Bargmann, a professor and landscape architect, has inspired their approach.

"Our designs are localized and characterized by closed loops of matter and energy." "We are focused on being economical and resourceful. We want to advance the conversation on recycling materials. We capture and reuse stormwater. We push recycling grey water on our clients. We collect plant seeds."

At their rented office in Los Angeles, Terremoto removed pavement, remediated soils, and added native plants. They also created their own materials depot with leftover materials from larger projects that they offer to clients with smaller projects and lower budgets. "Many cities have reuse centers, but we need more landscape material reuse centers," Godshall said. "We would like to see a collection depot formed in Los Angeles."

Terremoto office landscape / Nina Weithorn

"Our designs support ecosystems." "We push native plants on clients. They create habitat for critters. We design water sources in our projects, which supports bees, butterflies, birds, and even coyotes," Godshall said.

"We also apply a rambunctious design approach, mixing natives with non-natives. Near-natives are OK. We like the idea of creating orderly frames for messy ecosystems."

"Our designs support communities," including underserved and Indigenous communities. Terremoto's goal is to support the local communities near their offices in Los Angeles and Berkeley, including the Chumash and Tongva (Gabrielino) Indigenous communities of central California. "We are committed to co-creating with tribal communities. We donate to landback efforts and seek to bring visibility to their causes," Jones said.

"We seek to honor process, labor, and care." The firm documents its design process, taking photos of construction. "With clients, we often take an improvisational approach. We believe in serendipity. We are not a design-build firm but sometimes we act like we are," Godshall said.

Installing reclaimed wood at a Terremoto project / Terremoto

The firm also comes back to sites it has designed to learn about them and how to better care for them. "We develop relationships with the gardeners who manage our sites."

This focus on care extends to landscape laborers as well. In 2020, with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, the firm became newly galvanized to address social justice through their work. "The exploitation of landscape laborers can be inadvertent - well-meaning people can perpetuate class dynamics. We decided to combat landscape laborers' exploitation and become more outspoken," Jones said.

They worked with Rebecca Greenwald, a strategist, researcher, and writer, to form Terremoto's Land and Labor Initiative, which advances landscape workers' rights. "Landscape architects have a labor acknowledgement problem," Jones said. "Too many designers treat laborers like they are invisible. Who gets credit? Who is a collaborator?" She urged designers to "please value landcare laborers." Greenwald and Terremoto also support efforts to create a safe working environment for migrant laborers.

Landscape laborers on a Terremoto project / Terremoto

The firm also focuses on local materials, which helps them significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions from their projects and support local suppliers and manufacturers. "During Covid, we also weren't impacted by materials shortages because everything we used was nearby," Godshall said.

Local material and landscape laborers at a Terremoto project / Terremoto

Terremoto then shared a few projects that exemplify these approaches, including their plaza in Denver, Colorado.

In northern Los Angeles, Terremoto partnered with the Gabrielino-Shoshone tribal community to transform a steep, degraded 12-acre site into the Chief Ya'anna Learning Village. "The Gabrielino-Shoshone purchased a plot of land that is an engineered hillside - an artificial, constructed landscape. The community has existed for more than 200 years but up until recently had no land. Their goal has been to restore nature and create a ceremonial circle. They wanted the space to be regenerative," Jones said.

The tribe started the project by asking everyone to hold hands in a circle and give a blessing. "Let's hope for the best with this project." The experience of making the site as important as the resulting landscape and structures, Jones explained.

Terremoto and tribal leaders used a public art grant from the state of California to support the effort. "We made it a community planning exercise. The tribe put youth in the lead role, as they are the future of the community and it's important to include what they want," Jones said.

The team co-designed serpent mounds of different sizes. "The serpent mound is ceremonial but it was also an arts project. It features a gopher snake, which is a central spirit for the tribe. We used iron oxide to create red handprints on the snake of all those who contributed. It is a ceremonial site, an events space, and play structure," Jones said.

Serpent mound at Chief Ya'anna Learning Village, Los Angeles, California / Terremoto

They also built traditional structures using willow stalks. Jones said a hawk landed on the top of one of the structures, blessing it. And they incorporated the "three sisters" - corn, beans, and squash plants - into the learning landscape. The three sisters is an "ancient technique of planting food plants together in a community."

All of this work with Indigenous communities taught Jones about the value of "slowing down. Their events really take time. We often try to cover too much."

One example of their residential work shows how they restore local ecosystems. Frank Lloyd Wright designed a home in Los Angeles to feel like a Mayan ruin and hark back to a primeval era. Terremoto revitalized the landscape by making it a "creature garden," and planting "strange native plants," Godshall said. They have also been documenting the site's biodiversity.

The Storer House (Frank Lloyd Wright) / Caitlin Atkinson, courtesy of Terremoto

And the firm also shared their experience with Test Plots, which are "on-going experiments in land care." Los Angeles landscapes have been overrun with invasive grasses, like mustard grass, which is a fire hazard and also releases toxins that crowd out native plants. The challenge is that brush clearance crews in California parks mow everything down, Jones explained.

So Terremoto and community groups have set up test plots - small circular landscapes restorations, surrounded by a fence that are within a "hose shed." What started as an experiment in maintenance and community land stewardship has now become a collection of 17 test plots across city and state parks and a separate non-profit organization. These small, agile efforts have help them evade bureaucratic red tape. And they have built trust between parks departments and communities. "Test plots are small, hyper-local, and replicable," Jones said.

Test Plot, California/ Allen Vo, courtesy of Terremoto