A Santa Barbara studio serving Malibu and the Los Angeles coast — residential and commercial design, carried from first sketch through coastal approvals.
Malibu and Santa Barbara sit on the same stretch of California coastline, and they pose the same architectural question: how do you build well on a narrow shelf of land between the mountains and the Pacific? Our practice was built in Santa Barbara — a coastline where architecture is reviewed in public, hillsides carry fire risk, and every design has to make its case at a hearing. The habits that work there travel well: designing for salt air, hillside lots, ocean light, and wildfire country, with the approval argument built into the drawings from the start. That coastal design DNA is what we bring down the coast.
The drive helps, too. Malibu is a straightforward run from our Santa Barbara studio down the 101 and Pacific Coast Highway, which keeps site visits, agency meetings, and construction observation practical rather than occasional. We work where we can show up.
And Malibu is not one condition but several. Out on Point Dume and along western Malibu, bluff-top lots trade open water views for bluff-edge setbacks and the geologic study that justifies them. Around the Civic Center and the flatter ground near Malibu Lagoon, projects sit closer to commercial life, wastewater constraints, and questions of public access. Up the canyons that meet Pacific Coast Highway — Malibu Canyon, Corral, Latigo, Encinal — parcels climb into steep, fire-prone terrain where driveway grades, defensible space, and how a house holds its slope matter as much as the view. Each of these settings starts the design conversation in a different place, and knowing which conversation you are in is half the work.
We currently have work underway in the Malibu area, and the projects in our portfolio — hillside villas, ranch compounds, working wineries, a commercial aviation facility — show the sensibility we bring to it: quiet buildings, built for their site, that hold up to close attention. You can read more about the studio and the two partners behind it on our about page.
Malibu is one of the most carefully reviewed places to build in California. That is not a reason to avoid it — it is a reason to choose a Malibu architect who treats the approval path as part of the design problem, not an afterthought.
Most projects in Malibu pass through the City of Malibu's planning review before a building permit is issued. Massing, siting, view corridors, and neighborhood character all get examined — which means they need to be resolved in the design itself, not defended after the fact.
Malibu sits within the California Coastal Zone and issues coastal development permits under its own Local Coastal Program, certified by the California Coastal Commission — so a CDP is part of the approval path for most projects. On lots between the first public road and the sea, and near beaches, bluffs, and streams, decisions remain appealable to the Commission, which raises the bar the findings have to clear. Visual resources, bluff and shoreline conditions, and public access are all part of that case, and we fold them in from the first site study.
After the fire losses of recent years, much of the work in Malibu is rebuilding — and the city has offered expedited pathways for like-for-like rebuilds that can shorten review for owners replacing what they lost. Whether a project takes that route or rethinks the house from the ground up, current wildfire-resistant construction standards and defensible-space planning shape siting, materials, and detailing. A rebuild done carefully can be safer and better suited to its site than what stood before.
In Malibu, design, plan, and permit are less three phases than one argument built in layers. Design means resolving siting, massing, and view corridors against the Local Coastal Program's standards while the ideas are still inexpensive to change. Plan means assembling the technical case a coastal development permit application has to carry — geologic and bluff-edge analysis where the lot calls for it, fire access and defensible space, wastewater, biology. Permit means walking the drawings through City of Malibu planning review and the CDP hearing calendar, and, where a decision is appealable to the Coastal Commission, making sure the findings are written to hold. We carry all of it as one continuous effort, from first concept studies through construction documents and agency review, so the ideas that matter survive the process intact rather than being redesigned to satisfy it later.
If you are planning a home — new construction, a rebuild, or a remodel — our residential architecture page describes how we approach it. For restaurants, tasting rooms, offices, and other coastal commercial spaces, start with our commercial architecture services. Either way, the conversation begins in the same place: your site, and what you want from it.
Tell us about your site and what you want to build. We will give you a straight read on the design opportunities — and on the approval path ahead of them.
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