"Ironically, Morphosis' search to make Diamond Ranch meaningful may be successful partly because of struggling with a relatively low budget ($28 million) for such a large project.

"There was no money for the rich materials and complex detailing that we have come to expect of the firm. At Diamond Ranch, the details are well thought out but not overly articulate. No expensive connections call attention to themselves; they do the job. The structure is a fairly simple steel frame, though not without evidence of invention. In the gymnasium, for instance, the ceiling structure impresses one as impossibly light.

"For Morphosis, the restrictions proved beneficial. They forced the architecture to constantly reexamine itself, to look to the immaterial for inspiration and solutions. In this and other recent projects, Mayne has moved to a new way to make architecture. For Diamond Ranch, his firm rose to the occasion, finding economy where before it might have sought the opposite, concentrating on large moves, a unifying formal language.

— Alice Kimm, "Morphosis Diamond in the Rough", ArchitectureWeek, 2000.0607

The Creator's Words

""The multiplicity of ideas is what I'm interested in. The hybrid in our society - where there is no singular idea of what is beautiful.""

— Robin Pogrebin, "American Maverick Wins Pritzker Prize", New York Times, 2005.0321

Details

150,000 square feet of buildings on a 72 acre hillside campus.