Architecture · Landscape · Light

FORM FROM THE ground UP

A studio shaping warm concrete, daylight and terrain into buildings that hold their place quietly.

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The Practice

We build slowly, and for the long horizon. Each project begins on the site itself, reading the land before a single line is drawn.

TERRA is an architecture studio working at the meeting point of building and landscape. We favour honest materials, generous daylight and rooms that age well.

Our work spans private houses, cultural buildings and quiet civic spaces across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. We keep the studio small on purpose, so every drawing carries the same hand.

17+
Years in practice
48
Completed works
11
Awards & honours
6
Countries built in
(01)

Selected Works

Residential Concrete house set into a hillside
01

House on the Escarpment

Private HouseHood River, OR2024

A long concrete bar cut into a basalt ridge, framing the river valley through a single twelve metre opening.

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Cultural Daylit gallery interior
02

The Quarry Gallery

MuseumBend, OR2023

A daylight museum carved around an exhausted quarry, where top light washes raw stone walls left exactly as found.

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Civic Timber and concrete civic pavilion
03

Riverside Reading Rooms

LibraryPortland, OR2022

Three timber pavilions on a flood plain, raised on concrete plinths so the building reads the water rather than fears it.

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Hospitality Minimal retreat building in landscape
04

Larch Valley Retreat

LodgeCascade Range2021

Ten rooms threaded through a larch forest, each a quiet concrete cell opening onto a single chosen view.

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How we
work
01

Read the ground

We start on the site, in all weathers, mapping light, slope, water and the things already there worth keeping.

02

Draw by hand

Every project begins in pencil and physical models. The hand keeps the work honest before any screen touches it.

03

Build a fragment

We mock up real corners at full scale, testing concrete mixes, joints and daylight long before construction.

04

Hand it over

We stay on site to the last fixing, then let the building settle into its landscape and quietly become itself.

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Build
something lasting

studio@terra-arch.com
Portland · Oregon +1 503 555 0199 Instagram Journal