SFMOMA announces architecture exhibition on The Sea Ranch, a 1960's modernist project along California coastline

SFMOMA has announced their upcoming exhibition The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, and Idealism, which will run from December 2018 through April 2019. The show highlights the importance of The Sea Ranch in 20th century architectural history as a modernist project reacting against suburban sprawl.

The ranch was conceived in 1964 by developer Al Boeke and a group of Bay Area architects, landscape architects, and graphic designers including Charles Moore, Joseph Esherick, William Turnbull, Lawrence Halprin and Barbara Stauffacher Solomon. The community was built along the coast of Northern California located about two and a half hours north of San Francisco. 

The Sea Ranch was envisioned as a progressive, inclusive community, guided by the idealistic principles of good design, economy of space, and harmony with the natural environment. 

The exhibition brings together original sketches and drawings from the project's designers, along with archival images, photographs of the Sea Ranch today, and a full-scale architectural replica. 

The environmentally attentive design philosophies explored at the Sea Ranch, along with its iconic graphics, continue to influence today's architecture and design globally.