This project is a visitor’s center and site office for Better Place Forests, America’s first spreading forest. A spreading forest is a permanently protected forest where families can spread the ashes of their loved ones under private family trees. BPF’s first forest is opening in 2017 in a redwood forest overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Mendocino County, California. Designed for construction at the Mendocino location, the concept is also prototype for future spreading forests where the number and configuration of modules can be adjusted for programmatic or site constraints.

Jury Notes: The strategy of framing vistas and origami like folds make for a wonderful sequence of spaces. One could imagine a series of modular places that age gracefully and become one with its context.