Landscape
before form.
Marfa is an architecture and landscape practice working in the high desert and the arid west — buildings drawn from the ground they sit on, and the ground drawn with equal care.
We begin with water, wind and shade — the building arrives late.
Founded in Marfa, Texas, the practice works across residences, small civic buildings and the landscapes that hold them. Every project starts with a year of watching: where the runoff goes, which walls hold heat at four in the afternoon, what already grows without help.
What follows is deliberately plain — masonry, board-formed concrete, weathered steel, and planting that will outlive the drawings. Twenty-eight people, one office, one climate.
GroundWaterShadeThen walls