2025 Award Winner!Awarded by AIA Santa Barbara The Cate School Library and Inquiry Hub received an Honorable Mention Award from the American Institute of Architects Santa Barbara Chapter! As originally conceived through Blackbird Architect’s master plan for Cate School, this project…
Blackbird is dedicated to the details! Our team worked late into the night testing out in-house fabricated lighting mockups for our Ocean Bluff Residence.
Blackbird Architects in Santa Barbara announces exciting changes are coming to Jalama Beach County Park! A new comfort station is just one of the many planned improvements including expanded campground, parking, and coastal access. Green design features include photovoltaics and…
We are excited to share images of our latest project: a sustainable school design for a 5-acre farm lab located on the Pacific High School campus in Ventura. The Ventura Unified School District established a new certified organic farm program…
2022 Honor Award Winner!Awarded by AIA Santa Barbara The Thacher School’s Project-Based Learning Hub – The Gates – received the Honor Award of the American Institute of Architects Santa Barbara. Blackbird designed a visionary ‘academic beehive’ to sustainably redefine a…
2021 Honor Award Winner! Awarded by AIA Santa Barbara It gives Blackbird great pleasure to announce that our Dining Pavilion project has been chosen as one of this year’s AIA Santa Barbara’s Design Award recipients. To learn more about the…
California’s first ‘gigafire’ reminds us once again of the urgency for environmental stewardship and has us recalling the sustainability leadership of architect and former Blackbird architect, Brook Muller. Brook’s first book, “Ecology and the Architectural Imagination“, advocates for a…
Blackbird is pleased to announce our decision to join the AIA 2030 Commitment! The 2030 Commitment is an “initiative that provides a framework to help firms evaluate the impact of project design on energy performance.” The main goal calls for all…
After attending the sobering and inspiring lecture titled “Achieving Zero” by Ed Mazria (internationally recognized architect, author, researcher, and educator on the topic of sustainability – perhaps most well known for his organization ‘Architecture 2030’) hosted recently in Santa Barbara,…
As architects in one of the most comfortable and beautiful settings in the world, we are big proponents of tensile shade sails in design. Why? With elegant and affordable forms, colors and textures that hover in mid-air while providing temperate…
Switchable smart glass in action at our recently completed Hope Ranch Residence. See more photos and information about our design for this new custom residence by visiting the Hope Ranch Residence project page. Finding the right balance between privacy and…
The interaction between building and site is a critical design driver at Blackbird.
We do, and have done, lots of sustainable design work. We really enjoy this, and see the goals of using sound materials and less energy as no different than goals of having a project be structurally sound, functional and visually pleasing - it is simply part of what is required for good design.