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                    GOLDEN  HOUR                                                                  [   landscape  design studio    ]

[  framing nature with a wild edge ]



Golden Hour designs vibrant places that foster curiosity and horticultural intrigue. We work at a range of scales and project types from intimate urban garden plot to rambling rural estate. 

The goal is always to awaken the site’s potential and draw people into a richer relationship with nature. Close listening and observation always kick off the design process, followed by concept drawings proposing new directions that bridge dreams with functional requirements. After incorporating feedback and revisions,  plans are finalized and details documented so that the project can be taken through to installation. Close collaboration with contractors, suppliers, artisans, and gardeners ensures that the vision comes to life and flourishes. 
 

Chatbot embedded in your left wrist? (Me too.) Another reason to engage with the outdoors: a garden is a venue for reinhabiting your body and attending to nuanced changes in the immediate world.



Every project is an opportunity to support habitat, a small tithe toward the other complex tenants of this 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 shines in the sweet spot between tame and wild, design for us and the more-than-human. 

  •       Approaches & Ingredients

  • Provoke play and curiosity
  • Edit and adapt versus wipe the slate clean
  • Work closely and learn with builders
  • Encourage stewardship - grow new gardeners
  • Thoughtful details + ephemeral wonders 
  • New life and purpose for old things
  • Compost the past to fertilize the future 
  • Tease 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? Ongoing dance? New perceptions? New body? New relationships? Better future? 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 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,  the unceded homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone peoples.
garden, please: rafael@goldenhourlandscape.com for inquiries and collabs

@goldenhour_landscape


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