Meet Manzanita Lookout

It started as a string of loose, late-running conversations with the team behind SHLTR magazine about what this piece of land could become. What I pictured wasn't a single building. It was a small cluster of cabins gathered around a central courtyard, the kind of place where friends and family end up together without anyone having to organize it. Somewhere in those conversations, "who should I hire" turned into "what if we invited everyone." So we did. We made it a design competition and opened it to the whole community of architects, students, and makers. Strata Landscape Architecture laid out the master plan, SHLTR ran the competition, and more than forty teams sent back a design.

Before anyone drew a line, the teams came out to the land. I watched architects on their knees in the chaparral, filming the dirt, clocking where the light lands at five feet and again at twenty-five.

I was eagar to see which of the forty-plus submissions the jury would land on. The panel was led by Tom Kundig, one of the most awarded architects in the country, with Ben Waechter and Andrea Cochran. When a jury like that agrees unanimously on a single design, it’s going to be special.

The one they chose is called Manzanita Lookout by Mork-Ulnes Architects. It's a tapered tower, 215 square feet, built like the old fire lookouts that dot the Sierra foothills. Three levels stacked up the slope; a shaded deck tucked into the manzanita at the bottom, a sleeping nook lined in Douglas fir in the middle, and an open-air roost on top, which the architects designed for "cocktails, stargazing, and sleeping on hot nights."

Most of these competitions end at the rendering. Everybody claps, the drawings go in a drawer, nothing gets built. We're actually building this one, over the next year and a half.

My team and I are now working with the architect to make it fully buildable, answering questions like; how you heat a 215-square-foot tower (turns out heat and tall skinny buildings have never gotten along). Whether you can actually see the view from the one chair that'll fit up top. How a staircase threads three floors that small without eating the whole footprint. What the metal cladding and shutters have to do to seal the place up when the foothills catch fire, because out there it's a when, not an if.

The whole thing reminded me why I got into this field. Open the door to builders, designers, students, and makers, and you end up somewhere none of us would have reached alone. That's worth doing more often.

I'll share photos as it breaks ground. Watching a drawing turn into something is still my favorite thing about this job, whether it's a tower in the foothills or a house back in the Bay.

A real thanks to everyone who submitted, drove out to the land, and helped make this happen. The work was something else.