If you drive north from San Francisco, along the wildly beautiful Sonoma coast beyond the Russian River, you eventually arrive at the Sea Ranch. Stretching along 10 miles of rugged cliffs that hover above the crashing waves of the Pacific, this enclave of weathered weekend houses began as a unique experiment in design. Scattered over 4,000 acres, the community was planned in the idealistic spirit of the 1960s—it was a satellite, in a way, of the countercultural capitals of Berkeley and San Francisco, 100 miles to the south. Even the name—the Sea Ranch—conjured up a romantic utopia and spoke to the primacy of the natural surroundings, while the simple early houses, clad in boards or shingles, with shed roofs, nestled self-effacingly into the windswept meadows or forest hillsides. The highly prescribed architecture of the development meant that the structures were “not to be married to the site but to enter into a limited partnership with it,” as the original architects put it.
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