SEEKING WISDOM AT SOKA UNIVERSITY

A new California campus supports the educational philosophy of Soka University of America: to encourage human development and foster global understanding through comparative Eastern and Western perspectives. The campus, designed by Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, is at once outward and inward looking. Terraces and overlooks provide sweeping vistas of surrounding canyons and parkland while offering refuges for reflection. Next week, Allison Milionis will describe the new school and the architecture that supports a novel educational approach.

MODERN HEALTH CENTER IN A TRADITIONAL INDIAN VILLAGE

The Potawot Health Village is a single large building that is designed to look like a cluster of 12 separate houses in a traditional Northern California coastal Indian village. Even the modern building materials were crafted to reflect the 10,000-year ancestry of the local tribes. The design team from MulvannyG2 Architecture designed tilt-up concrete walls that resemble the redwood planks of the region's traditional Indian houses. Next week, Brian Libby will explain how it was done and how the result supports tribal values for healing.

RESTORING THE GIANT SEQUOIAS

The notion that architecture should fit the vernacular of its surroundings did not begin in the national parks, but few other architectural styles blend as well with the landscape as the "national park rustic" style does. Log walls, wood-shingled roofs, and stone masonry have formed the basis of this design vocabulary. And yet a proliferation of such buildings can be damaging to the landscape. In Sequoia National Park, a recently completed restoration has removed many of these buildings to protect the giant sequoia trees. Environmental writer Kim A. O'Connell will describe this extraordinary act of land stewardship.