Designer profile: John Merten and the lay of the land
John Merten, principal of Studio Green Landscape Architecture in San Anselmo, embodies that concept.
Artistic talent and an intuitive grasp of spatial relationships are in Merten’s DNA.
Pair that with developmental years spent a block from Golden Gate Park and Merten’s passion for landscape design becomes almost a foregone conclusion.
I was an OK student; fortunately I never had trouble learning geometry, and visualizing things in three dimensions comes easy, Merten said.
The amateur operation, Contemporary Landscapes, involved digging trenches, building decks and laying sprinklers with a friend.
Since graduating Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in 1987 with a degree in landscape architecture, Merten has worked in Chicago, the Bay Area and on a proposed project in Saudi Arabia.
Merten began Studio Green with founding partner Janet Green in 1995.
The studio has four employees — plus Merten himself — who create renderings, refine designs, illustrate graphics and coordinate with architects.
Most of their work revolves around newly constructed luxury homes, though the firm also creates landscapes for hospitality businesses and schools.
Studio Green’s partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District has added play areas and gardens to 11 campuses.
In this conversation with SFiS Homes, Merten talks about his style preferences, embracing a landscape’s nuances and the technology he wouldn’t want to be without.
If a neighboring home can look into the yard, provide privacy where people will gather.
What’s your favorite aspect of landscape architecture?
Tastes are more sophisticated, which is liberating because the palette is freer.
Part of the reason they hired me was because they were designing a corporate headquarters in Saudi Arabia and no one there had familiarity with desert conditions.
A layer of frost comes into the soil, dampening it and causing it to expand.
Smartphones, digital photography, three-dimensional renderings.
When I started you’d shoot photos, then develop the film into contact prints.
Computer programming was expensive and the programs were slow.