From the earliest days of the West Coast landscape architecture firm TERREMOTO, a strange cloud hung over it. It was a cloud not of terror or hopelessness but of profound uncertainty. In 2013, roughly six months into the life of the firm, founding partners David Godshall and Alain Peauroi were meeting at a cafe in the Bay Area when Peauroi had a seizure. Godshall called 911 and followed the ambulance to the hospital. After various tests, doctors told Peauroi he had glioblastoma, an incurable form of brain cancer. The average person with glioblastoma lives just 12 to 18 months, and yet the prognosis barely seemed to faze Peauroi, from Godshalls perspective. He wasnt one to live small or to let it get in the way of what he wanted to do, Godshall shared over Zoom. He did a triathlon, he got married, he had two kids. The cancer and the uncertainty it introduced did, however, add an emotional and, at times, existential dimension to the partnership. There were several times when I thought that I was going to lose [Alain], Godshall said, recalling one of several brain surgeries Peauroi had over the years. So in a weird way, Ive been slowly preparing myself for this to happen. But preparing yourself is a very different thing than having it happen.Alain Peauroi at Sea Ranch (Courtesy TERREMOTO)Peauroi died on January 14, 12 years after the initial diagnosis. He was 46 years old. TERREMOTO shared the news on Instagram, writing: Alain was kind, generous, handsome, funny, and had no patience for bullshit. He was somehow simultaneously both gentle and powerful. He leaves behind two perfect little boys, a loving wife, and an office of twenty-six souls who all miss him dearly. A memorial for Peauroi was held February 8 at Marinship Studios, an artist collective in Sausalito for which TERREMOTO designed the communal spaces. TERREMOTO is also setting up a scholarship in Peaurois name for landscape architecture students at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo. In the years since Peauroi and Godshall founded TERREMOTOalways leading separate offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, respectivelythe firm has unquietly become one of the most influential and critically acclaimed landscape architecture practices on the West Coast, possibly in the United States. With 26 people currently on staff and 64,000 followers on Instagram, TERREMOTO is the rare landscape architecture firm with fans. (The office even has merch: A branded hat, perched on the head of a Superiority Burger employee, recently appeared in The New Yorker.) The studio has been included on Architectural Digests AD100 list for the past five years and in 2021 was named the Landezine International Landscape Awards Office of the Year. (Every community needs a TERREMOTO, Landezines editors wrote at the time.) Last month, just days after the news of Peaurois death broke, TERREMOTO received the 2025 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award in Landscape Architecture.They created a movement, Bianca Koenig, a landscape architect and founder of BEK Collective in Cayucos, California, told AN. TERREMOTOs preference for shaggy, wild-looking landscapesoften built from salvaged materials and native plantseven in the highest-end settings, such as celebrity gardens, showed her (and seemingly an entire generation of landscape designers) that the two were compatible. More importantly, the firm wasnt afraid to take a stand and have uncomfortable discussions around labor and the environment, Koenig said. To see this young, up-and-coming group do that was super inspiring.TERREMOTO operates offices in offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. (Courtesy TERREMOTO)Amid the accolades, Peaurois contributions to TERREMOTOs ethos could be hard to discern from the outside. Peaurois reluctance to court the spotlight, coupled with an innate inscrutability, rendered him the less visible, slightly more enigmatic partner. TERREMOTO really is half Alain and half David, but a lot of people dont know that, said Jenny Jones, a partner in the firms Los Angeles office. Davids very outward facing, like, Lets talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And Alains quieter. Hes more like, Lets get it done.Alain felt like the work speaks for itself, and thats where he would put his energy, recalled Nick Gotthardt, who met Peauroi at Surfacedesign in San Francisco, where Gotthardt is now a principal.As TERREMOTO grew, Peauroi and Godshall operated as a kind of double helix, complementary forces that provided balance but also the means to achieve what neither designer could have on his own. David was always more the face of TERREMOTOthe person taking the pictures, putting the website together, Instagrambut David could not have done all that without Alain. Rebecca Greenwald, a researcher and strategist who worked with TERREMOTO on its Land and Labor initiative, said: It takes a lot of very unsexy stuff to build the infrastructure to scale from 3 people to 30 people, and almost all of that stuff was Alain.Those who worked with Peauroi describe him as unpretentious. The son of two accountants, he had a working-class sensibility that facilitated an easy rapport with the firms construction crews. He had a lifelong respect for craftsmanship. He was a designer who hated CAD but loved value engineering. Who didnt equivocate but always allowed other people to speak. As Michal Kapitulnik, who worked with Peauroi at Surfacedesign, put it, Alain is one of the few people Ive ever met who is truly open-minded. Like, no pretense.Peauroi graduated from Cal Poly SLO with a degree in landscape architecture in 2002. Gary Clay, one of Peaurois professors, remembers Peauroi as a thoughtful and kind young person who was always trying to do things, to become a better person. I remember thinking, This kid is going to be something.TERREMOTO did landscape design work at the historic Sea Ranch Lodge. (Courtesy TERREMOTO)Godshall and Peauroi met in 2010 at Surfacedesign, where Peauroi had been employed since earning a masters degree in industrial design from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands in 2007. While there, Peauroi became known for immaculately detailed yet elemental designs, such as Lands End Lookout above San Franciscos famed Sutro Baths. He just knew how to detail things and how to teach you how to detail things, said Surfacedesigns Gotthardt. Part of the mystique behind Alain is that he looks like this surfer bro, but hes a very thoughtful, detail-oriented designer and craftsperson.Throughout his years at TERREMOTO, Peauroi remained a natural mentor and teacher but also a lifelong learner. He would teach us through just going to site and figuring things out, recalled Nadia Alquaddoomi, Peaurois first hire for TERREMOTOs San Francisco office. He led by example, but he also believed that he was learning by example from the builders.Timothy A. Schuler is a journalist and design critic whose work has appeared in Metropolis, Dwell, Bloomberg CityLab, and Places Journal, among other outlets. He is also a contributing editor at Landscape Architecture Magazine. He lives in Manhattan, Kansas.