Beyond the Lawn: How 2025 National Design Award Winners TERREMOTO are Redefining Landscape Architecture Through Radical Gardening

LOS ANGELES & BERKELEY, CALIF. — In an era defined by ecological anxiety and the urgent need for climate adaptation, the landscape architecture studio TERREMOTO is challenging the foundational dogmas of how humans shape the earth. Founded in 2012 by a collective of irreverent and deeply thoughtful designers, the firm has spent over a decade dismantling traditional conventions of landscape construction, material sourcing, and formal aesthetics. Now, as recipients of the prestigious 2025 National Design Award, TERREMOTO is poised to take its philosophy of "radical gardening" to a broader global audience.

This movement is not merely a stylistic pivot toward native planting or drought-tolerant landscaping; it is an existential reimagining of the garden. TERREMOTO’s practice-wide commitment centers on creating "omni-positive" gardens—landscapes that are deeply empathetic, ecologically restorative, and meticulously designed to support all living things across every conceivable scale, from microscopic soil organisms to migratory fauna and human communities alike.

Main Facts: The Anatomy of TERREMOTO’s Radical Practice

At its core, TERREMOTO operates across dual offices in Los Angeles and Berkeley, California, functioning as both a traditional design studio and an experimental laboratory. The firm’s portfolio spans diverse typologies and scales, ranging from intimate residential plots to expansive institutional and agricultural landscapes. However, what unites these varied projects is a collective rejection of the manicured, resource-intensive lawns and rigid geometric boundaries that have long dominated Western landscape design.

Key tenets of TERREMOTO’s operational philosophy include:

• Omni-Positive Design: Landscapes must give back more than they take, actively repairing local ecosystems while providing spaces for human reflection, connection, and joy.
• Process-Based Stewardship: Recognizing that a garden is never "finished," TERREMOTO designs for evolution, embracing the unpredictable, dynamic lifecycles of nature.
• Closed-Loop Systems: Minimizing external inputs, prioritizing hyperlocal materials, and reducing the carbon footprint associated with material transport and heavy machinery.
• Non-Human Centricity: Elevating the needs of non-human communities—pollinators, soil microbiomes, native flora, and fauna—to parity with human desires.

The firm’s recent ascension to the pantheon of National Design Award winners underscores a broader cultural shift in the design world. Judges and critics are increasingly recognizing that the future of architecture and landscape design lies not in imposing human order upon nature, but in collaborating with ecological processes to foster resilience.

Chronology: The Evolution of an Iconoclast Studio

To understand how TERREMOTO reached this watershed moment, it is necessary to trace the trajectory of the firm from its inception to its current status as a leading voice in contemporary environmental design.

2012: Inception and Ideological Roots

TERREMOTO was founded in California with a specific, rebellious mandate: to treat gardens and landscapes as active explorations of ideas and culture rather than passive ornamentation. Operating against the backdrop of California’s historic droughts and sprawling suburban developments, the studio began questioning the ethics of resource-heavy landscape construction methods. They asked radical questions: Why do we ship stone across continents when local quarried rock exists? Why do we demand perfection when nature is defined by chaos and adaptation?

2010s–Early 2020s: Expanding the Portfolio and Experimentation

Over the subsequent decade, the studio built a reputation for site-specific landscapes that responded intimately to client needs while aggressively challenging historical and contemporary formal conventions. Projects across California began to showcase a distinct material honesty. They utilized recycled materials, allowed weeds to flourish alongside carefully curated native species, and prioritized resourcefulness over hyper-refined aesthetic polish.

2024–2025: Codifying Radical Gardening and National Recognition

As climate impacts intensified across the American West, TERREMOTO synthesized its years of experimentation into a formal set of "principles of radical gardening." This conceptual framework unified the firm’s diverse projects under a single banner of ecological empathy and political consciousness. The culmination of this trajectory arrived in 2025, when the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum recognized the studio with a National Design Award, cementing their influence on the national architectural and cultural landscape.

Supporting Data: The Minds Behind the Movement

The intellectual rigor of TERREMOTO is driven by a multidisciplinary team that blends deep ecological knowledge with artistic experimentation and historical preservation.

Kasey Toomey: Materiality and Non-Human Centricity

As a landscape architect and principal co-leading TERREMOTO’s Bay Area practice, Kasey Toomey brings a unique dual background in landscape architecture (BSLA with Distinction in Research from Cornell University) and sculpture (MFA from the University of Pennsylvania).

Toomey’s work is characterized by a relentless interrogation of material provenance: Where do materials come from, and how much—or how little—is needed to make a place meaningful? By focusing on hyperlocal plants, raw materials, and non-human centric design solutions, Toomey champions resourcefulness over refinement. His iterative approach relies heavily on collaboration with the laborers, builders, and tradespeople who translate design abstractions into tangible reality.

Story Wiggins: Stewardship and Cultural Specificity

Story Wiggins, also a principal at TERREMOTO, anchors her design philosophy in historic preservation, land stewardship, and deep ecological listening. Holding an MLA from UC Berkeley and a BA in Historic Preservation and French from the College of Charleston, Wiggins leads residential, commercial, institutional, and agricultural projects with an intuitive, restrained hand.

Wiggins’s recent work reflects a profound engagement with cultural landscapes and indigenous sovereignty. She has explored design illegibility within the historic coastal landscape of the Sea Ranch and collaborated closely with Ohlone leaders at the mak-warép Land Conservancy to honor bioregional and cultural specificity. Furthermore, Wiggins leads TERREMOTO’s internal "Land and Labor" working group, an advocacy initiative dedicated to supporting the building and gardening trades and the human hands that physically shape our built environments.

Official Responses and Public Discourse: A Conversation on Climate Justice

The significance of TERREMOTO’s work extends far beyond aesthetic appreciation; it sits at the intersection of climate politics, social justice, and spatial practice. This dialogue was brought to the forefront during a recent public conversation featuring TERREMOTO principals Kasey Toomey and Story Wiggins alongside noted interdisciplinary scholar of climate justice and design, Billy Fleming.

Billy Fleming, founding co-director of the Climate and Community Institute, assistant professor of landscape architecture at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture, and former director of the Ian L. McHarg Center at the University of Pennsylvania, moderated the discussion. Fleming, an authority on post-carbon futures and climate policy, framed TERREMOTO’s practice as a vital political and ecological intervention.

During the panel, the speakers dissected how design studios can translate high-minded environmental values into daily practice. They explored the mechanics of process-based stewardship, closed-loop material cycles, and the ethical imperative of caring for both human and non-human communities.

Fleming emphasized that traditional landscape architecture has historically served real estate capital and elite aesthetic desires. In contrast, he positioned TERREMOTO’s work as part of an emergent vanguard of designers who view the garden not as a status symbol, but as a political canvas. Together, the panelists explored how contemporary gardens can serve as powerful tools for imagining a radical, sustainable future—one that is built and tended collectively with love and ecological responsibility.

Implications: What Radical Gardening Means for the Future of Design

The recognition of TERREMOTO by the National Design Awards carries profound implications for the broader architecture, urban planning, and landscape design disciplines. As climate change accelerates, municipal governments, developers, and private homeowners are realizing that 20th-century paradigms of environmental management are no longer viable.

1. The Death of the Monoculture Lawn

The manicured, chemical-dependent green lawn—a historical import from European aristocracy unsuited to most American bioregions—faces an existential threat. TERREMOTO’s philosophy normalizes landscapes that embrace brown phases, seasonal dormancy, wildness, and ecological complexity. By reframing "weeds" as native pioneers and accepting ecological messiness as a sign of health, the studio is shifting public taste toward a more mature appreciation of nature.

2. Valuing Labor and Material Provenance

By addressing the supply chains of landscape construction—such as the carbon cost of transporting non-native stone or importing topsoil—TERREMOTO forces the design community to confront its complicity in resource extraction. Furthermore, through initiatives like the "Land and Labor" working group, the firm highlights the urgent need to dignify and support the blue-collar tradespeople, gardeners, and construction workers who realize these designs. True sustainability, the firm argues, must include social and labor justice.

3. Decolonizing the Land

Through collaborations with indigenous land trusts like the mak-warép Land Conservancy, TERREMOTO demonstrates that contemporary landscape architecture can step away from colonial models of land ownership and domination. By listening to indigenous stewards and honoring historical and cultural specificities, landscape architects can help heal historical fractures in the land.

Conclusion

As TERREMOTO looks toward the future, their principles of radical gardening serve as a blueprint for an industry at a crossroads. By proving that ecological responsibility, material honesty, and deep empathy can give rise to entirely novel forms of beauty, the studio is not just designing gardens—they are cultivating a new way for humanity to inhabit the earth.