TERRAFORMA

Biophilic Architecture Studio — Portland · Kyoto · Bergen

Buildings that breathe.

We design mass-timber structures that grow out of their landscapes — and give more back to the soil than they take.

Featured work Our ethos

Ethos

We build with the forest, not in it.

Every Terraforma building begins two metres below grade — with the soil, the mycorrhizae, the water table. Structure comes second. Since 2011 we have worked exclusively in regional mass timber, planting three trees for every one milled, and handing each site back healthier than the survey found it.

The result is architecture that behaves like a canopy: shading in July, breathing in January, filtering rain the whole year round. Our clients call it calm. Our engineers call it a 41% cooling-load reduction.

Hectares of forest restored
0
kWh saved annually across our buildings
0M
Timber sourced within 300 km
0%
Living species per completed site
0
Courtyard atrium with cascading hanging gardens and god-rays through a skylight grid

“Light, water and timber want to move.
Our job is to stop getting in the way.”

— Ines Okafor, founding principal

Featured work

Three sites, three climates,
one quiet method.

Method

Living Systems

Every commission moves through three strata — the same order a forest uses.

  1. 01

    Soil

    Eighteen months of listening before a line is drawn. Hydrology mapping, mycorrhizal surveys, a census of everything already living on site. The ground writes the first sketch.

  2. 02

    Structure

    Regional mass timber, cut to the grain and joined without glue where we can manage it. Every beam is a carbon store; every span is sized by the forest that grew it.

  3. 03

    Canopy

    Living roofs, moss walls, hanging gardens — the building's active skin. Planted at handover, audited every equinox, and measurably wilder ten years on.

Moss and basalt feature wall in the Terraforma studio, lit by a warm brass sconce

Studio

Nineteen people,
three time zones,
one nursery.

Founded in 2011 by Ines Okafor and Tomas Lindqvist, Terraforma runs studios in Portland, Kyoto and Bergen — each one attached to a working plant nursery where every specified species is grown and killed and grown again before it ever reaches a client's wall. Architects, soil scientists and one very patient arborist.

  • RIBA International Award, 2024 — Cedar Loom
  • Architizer A+ “Best in Sustainability”, 2023
  • Certified B Corp since 2017 · Carbon-negative since 2019