Sea Ranch landed on my bucket list of places to visit when I was studying architecture in college. Despite moving to the San Francisco Bay Area 10 years ago, I didn’t make it to Sea Ranch until recently, although its location is only three hours north of the city. Perhaps in my mind it felt like some far-off destination, mythical almost, due to its reputation as a modernist utopia.

It’s no secret we love art, but what you may not know is that we especially love installation art. Earlier this year we had the privilege of visiting Oliver Ranch in Sonoma County, located about a 1.5 hour drive north of San Francisco (sans traffic).

Steve Oliver of the Oliver and Company construction firm and former president of the board at SFMOMA commissioned the first piece for his ranch in 1985. Since then, the stunning 100-acre property has seen 17 more installations built. Fun fact: Oliver Ranch was the first site-specific sculpture park of its kind preceding the more well-known Storm King Art Center in New York.

Despite being an interior designer, I still get most of my inspiration from architecture, and I'm most impressed with designers who excel at both architecture and interiors. The prolific Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) is probably considered the ultimate architect/interior designer as he custom designed all of his interiors and furnishings in addition to the architecture. Recently, his Hanna House located in Stanford, CA, was reopened to visitors, and I took a Saturday morning last month to take a tour.

Born in Spokane, Washington, Nakashima studied architecture at the University of Washington and MIT. He traveled to France, North Africa, and Japan for several years, and began making furniture for the first time in 1937 for a dormitory project in India. He returned to the United States in 1940, and was interned in 1942 during the Second World War. It was here where he apprenticed with a Japanese carpenter, learned traditional Japanese techniques, and honed his craft.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies was established in the 1960s by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine. The complex of research buildings is punctuated by multiple 40'x25' light wells that extend to the basement level to bring natural light into the labs. Lining the travertine plaza are offices for the researchers, all with views of the Pacific Ocean. Louis Kahn asked famous Mexican architect Luis Barragan for his input on the plaza, and Barragan told him to add "not one plant or flower, but a single water feature" instead.