FRAMING THE VALLEY

MARIA OGRYDZIAK, HOUSES

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“Maria’s projects yield continual inventions, each a way of capturing aspects of the Great Valley and the many places and landscapes that it harbors. The forms and spaces are richly configured, allowing life to resonate within them and echo out into the surroundings. Her works, so well presented here, join mind, material, and action to create the wonder of fully inhabitable places.”

Donlyn Lyndon, FAIA, renowned architect, educator, and author of The Sea Ranch: Fifty Years of Architecture, Landscape, Place, and Community on the Northern California Coast

 

 

“Maria Ogrydziak casts an artist’s eye on the landscapes of California’s Central Valley, on the compact towns and endless fields, the winding streams and encircling hills, spread out under a brilliant sky, which she so deeply loves. Woven into these settings, her homes resonate with the diverse and creative lives lived within them.”

Tim Culvahouse, FAIA, editor of arcCA (Architecture California)

 

 

“This elegant book conveys how Maria Ogrydziak’s architecture has offered discerning homeowners the option of a crisp modernism keyed to the big skies, shade trees, agricultural engineering and long horizons of the Californian interior’s hot, enigmatic expanse. In this it offers one answer to the puzzle of how to build in a region largely overlooked by Californian architecture culture.”

Simon Sadler, author of Archigram: Architecture without Architecture and The Situationist City

 
 

About the Book

“Architecture is transformation. Not just of materials and space, but also of people and place. The best architecture is inextricably woven with its landscape, its culture, and its inhabitants. For a long time, I have practiced architecture in California’s Central Valley—a region full of growth and vitality, entrepreneurial spirit, and grounded hard work. I have worked intimately with its sky: a blue that goes beyond blue. I have mirrored its shining sun and have played with its orderly crop rows. I have paid homage to its flocks of birds which hover and dive. My architecture and I have gone native. We’ve made this vibrant region of infinite possibility our home.”

—Maria Ogrydziak

 

Framing the Valley features eight case study houses where trailblazing people—with both modest and luxurious budgets—craft remarkable lives through Maria Ogrydziak’s architecture. Projects include Art Barn, a steel horse barn transformed into an art gallery; Flight House, a budget-friendly remote-work homestead; Edge Loft and Music Box, remodels of California’s classic ranch-style and mid-century modern tract homes; and Iridescent, a 15,000-square-foot luxury homestead clad in shimmering glass. 


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About the Author

Maria Ogrydziak is an expert in California Central Valley architecture, with 400 projects built in the region. Her firm designs attainable, extraordinary spaces for everyday lives. A civic leader and architect, she served as president of the AIA Central Valley Chapter and was the founder of the annual Central Valley Region Architecture Festival. She is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and has taught at MIT, Stanford University, and the University of California at Davis. She lives in Davis, California, in her self-designed artist loft.


 

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