SIGRID MILLER POLLIN STUDIO

The rugged landscape of the foothills around Riverside provided Miller Pollin with an opportunity to understand how an architectural vocabulary could root itself in and grow out of this terrain. She began the design process by investigating the site’s topography: the hills, shallow ravines and jagged rocks. She observed and photographed the site extensively experimenting with the impact of siting structures within this particular landscape. She found the various topographical conditions of the site could be distilled into distinct potential relationships to built form. For example, a valley or ravine cued concepts of infilling or bridging. A strong slope could be paired with cantilevering or precariously restraining built form. Inspired by the powerful rock outcroppings whose gritty gray roughness contrasts with the feathery desert undergrowth, Miller Pollin studied these spatial conditions in the topography and the rock formations. These were geological phenomena whose relationship to built form could establish a set of ground rules for these structures.