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                    GOLDEN  HOUR                                                                  [   landscape  design studio    ]

[  framing nature with a wild edge ]



Golden Hour brings vibrant places into the world that foster curiosity and horticultural intrigue. We design at a range of scales and project types from residential to public landscape, intimate urban garden plot to rambling rural estate. 


With each project, the goal is to awaken the site’s potential. The design portal opens with close listening and observation to inform a sensitive response. Concept drawings with hard and soft elements propose new directions, with an eye to bridging clients’ dreams for the space with functional requirements. After incorporating  feedback and revisions,  plans are finalized and documented so that the project can be taken through to installation. Engagement and close collaboration with contractors, suppliers, artisans, and gardeners/stewards ensures that the vision comes to life and flourishes as imagined.
 

Chatbot embedded in your left wrist? Another reason to engage with the outdoor environment. A garden is a venue for inhabiting your body and practicing attention to natural changes through time. 



Every project is an opportunity to support habitat, a small tithe toward the other complex tenants of Earth. Gardens are more than pretty; they can be designed to feed the life web and contribute to biodiversity, one host plant at a time. Our non-human neighbors don’t share our mainstream landscape aesthetic, which feels like a sad food desert to them. Golden Hour gestures to the relaxed sweet spot between tame and wild, design for us and the more-than-human. 

  •       Approaches & Ingredients

  • Hands-on listening and learning
  • Edit and adapt versus wipe the slate clean
  • Context and playful moments of dissonance 
  • Natural non-chemical solutions
  • Surprising details + ephemeral wonders 
  • New life and purpose for old things
  • Compost the past to fertilize the future 
  • Teasing out the stories
  • Thou Shalt Not Bore





The Aim is to create a thing of interest, benefit, and beauty in collaboration with client and site, while also broadening the notion of what that thing might be…  Beautiful garden? Gift? New perceptions? New body? New relationships? Yes!




Rafael earned a Master’s of Landscape Architecture from UC Berkeley (2017) and a certificate of horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (2012). Previously, he designed residential and institutional landscapes with Ron and team at the award-winning firm Lutsko Associates (2017-2022). In a past life he hustled in the wilds of arts administration and horticulture in New York City, where he worked at world-class public gardens including the High Line and Brooklyn Bridge Park. 

Golden Hour is an evolving queer-led business in SF, working in the unceded homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples.
garden, please: rafael@goldenhourlandscape.com for inquiries and collaborations

@goldenhour_landscape


1st built work at tip-top designed while at Lutsko Associates. Site under construction