Who we are.
We believe in the inseparability of place and form, land and use.
We are a service-oriented design firm with regional expertise, dedicated to creating meaningful connections between built environments and the landscapes they inhabit. Our work emerges from deep engagement with both the land and our client’s visions.
Since our founding in 2005, our multidisciplinary team’s diverse perspectives and expertise, combined with an iterative design process and equal commitment to form and context, have enabled us to create spaces that authentically reflect and meld with their unique settings. By intentionally remaining small as a firm, we ensure hands-on involvement throughout every project phase, fostering close relationships with our clients, our builders, and intimate knowledge of every site.
We approach each project as an opportunity for discovery, allowing the land’s inherent qualities and our clients’ needs to guide the design. While our aesthetic may vary, our core philosophy - creating harmonious, beautiful, and deeply rooted landscapes - remains constant.
Michael Lucas, Founding Principal
Founding principal of Lucas and Lucas, lives sand works in Healdsburg. A lover of art, beauty and all things California, he has a deep passion for the outdoors, a penchant for swimming in cold water and devoted yoga practice. With an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture from Cal Poly, Pomona, Mike’s life passions blend naturally with his landscape architecture practice, which he has pursued for over 30 years. Inspired by the relaxed pace of life in Northern California to create environments that speak to the region’s topography and natural rhythms, he brings a personal, soulful approach to his work.
Arek Medina, Production and Office Manager
Arek is a licensed Landscape Architect with over 10 years of experience in the profession and a Bachelor of Science degree in Landscape Architecture from UC Davis. His work has ranged from commercial and hospitality, to design-build, to residential, and has instilled a skill and appreciation for the technical and practical aspects of Landscape Architecture. As the production and office manager at Lucas + Lucas, he uses his expertise to ensure quality, buildability, and efficiency on all of our projects. In addition to his office roles, a lot of his time is spent on construction sites where his easy-going nature and technical know-how help to ensure the success and completion of our projects. Outside of work you can find him rock climbing, playing disc golf, and spending time with his partner Diana and their pup Ruby.
Sophie Krause, Designer and Project Manager
Sophie has always enjoyed working with her hands and in the dirt. With a degree in Environmental Science and Sustainable Urban Horticulture from the University of California Santa Cruz, and a graduate degree in Landscape Architecture from the University of Washington, Sophie spent her early years learning everything she could about plants, people, and place-making. Travels around the world working as a landscape designer - from Chicago to Copenhagen to Versailles - reinforced this love of learning how to craft and care for gardens. A Sonoma County native, she now continues this place-making back home for our clients, contributing a plant-focused and artful touch to the team's diverse projects. She enjoys backpacking with her dog Loki, exploring the natural world around her, and gardening at her cabin.
Giovanni Rossato, Designer and Project Manager
Giovanni holds a Bachelor’s degree in Science of Architecture from IUAV School of Architecture in Venice, Italy. After university he was eager to learn more about sustainable building practices, and traveled extensively through Australia and New Zealand living and working on organic farms. From this experience the concepts of: self-sufficiency, companion planting, forest gardens, and creating community outdoors became the clear design principles that drove him towards landscape architecture. After returning home and working in Italy for a few years, he moved to Sonoma County in 2018, where he worked as a landscape designer and project manager on a variety of projects. His earlier work in California includes experience at boutique design-build offices and a few years as a freelance landscape designer.
He brings knowledge in architectural and landscape design to each project, working diligently to create a seamless experience between architecture and nature. In his free time he loves to play music, cook and tend the garden at his home in Santa Rosa, where he lives with his wife and two young children.
Ruby
Ruby is most comfortable ignoring her plush bed in favor of the cool concrete beneath the office conference table. From this vantage point she finds fulfillment lazily surveying the team and the traffic outside our front door. Never shy to give the heartiest of greetings, any visitors can expect copious weaving between the legs while Ruby demands back scratches.
Loki
You can find Loki working hard to greet everyone that comes and goes from the office, rolling in the gravel, sunning in the courtyard, and reminding us all that there is plenty of time for a belly rub or a walk around the block.
Sprite
Spirited, loveable, goofball.
What we believe.
We believe in balance.
Design requires a balance of right and left brained thinking; creativity, sensitivity, and intuition combined with technical skills, analytical abilities and grounded pragmatism. The dance between these two realms is the art of what we do.
We design holistic environments.
Great projects don’t happen in isolation. Successful projects represent the coming together of a number of key elements: site, structure, climate, people. For us, a successful process derives from an integrated approach to design - a collaborative process with client, architect, landscape architect, builder and engineer working hand-in-hand from the earliest stages of the project. This holistic approach to design lies at the heart of our work.
We believe function and beauty are inseparable.
All environments exist to create an experience, and the quality of that experience exists in direct relation to how well it functions, the connection between its component parts, and the symbiotic relationship between indoors and out. Successfully designed spaces create a natural flow that seems to expand and contract with the tides of use, enhancing the experience of beauty.
Photographer: Dan Quinones