About an hour and a half’s drive south of San Francisco, the University of California at Santa Cruz is a world apart, with its eclectic mid-rise buildings hidden among clusters of towering redwoods in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. However, its satellite Coastal Science Campus, on a windswept bluff along the Pacific Ocean a couple of miles away, called for a different architectural response. Designed by San Francisco–based firm EHDD, the new Coastal Biology Building, for research and teaching on coastal conservation, ecology, and climate change, reconciles a context-appropriate agricultural vernacular with modern lab requirements and the demand for collaborative spaces.