How an Unsung Architect Gave Big Sur Its Look

A remembrance was held last week after the passing of Mickey Muennig, the architect who imbued California’s mystic coastline with organic, flowing architecture.

How an Unsung Architect Gave Big Sur Its Look

A remembrance was held last week after the passing of Mickey Muennig, the architect who imbued California’s mystic coastline with organic, flowing architecture.

A look at the 30-room Post Ranch Inn, which contains no right angles.

Mickey Muennig, the architect who many referred to as "the man who built Big Sur," passed away at the age of 86 earlier this month. Last week, friends and family gathered at the Henry Miller Memorial Library for a ceremony his daughter, Michele Muennig, dubbed Gnomeanomaly—a marriage of gnome and anomaly that underscores her father’s whimsical nature.

Originally from Joplin, Missouri, Mickey Muennig graduated in 1959 from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied under pioneering architect Bruce Goff. He moved to Big Sur, California, in 1971 and quickly became acclaimed for his eco-forward designs.

"Mickey was a gnome, or a wise man, or a magician, or a wizard," attests Muennig’s longtime friend Magnus Toren in an interview with Monterey County Weekly. "He had that kind of personality where he was very much living in his own space, in his own mind."

For much of Muennig’s life, those around him would refer to the architect as "Gnome." Big Sur locals who regularly caught glimpses of him flying by in his bright red Mini Cooper called him "White Elf." As a result of his work in the Golden State, critics gave him a different title: the unsung pioneer of California’s iconoclastic organic architecture movement.

The thousand-foot cliffs and precipitous mountains of Big Sur, California, have a long history of attracting contrarian thinkers. Taking cues from the flora, fauna, and rocky cliffs of the region, California, Mickey Muennig's brand of organic architecture doesn't stop with the terrain.

Born in 1935 in Joplin, Missouri, George Kay Muennig left his hometown at age 18 to attend the Georgia Institute of Technology. Though he originally planned to study aeronautical engineering, he became fascinated with architecture upon reading about the creations of architect Bruce Goff, a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright. Shortly thereafter, Muennig transferred to the University of Oklahoma to train under Goff before graduating in 1959.

It wasn’t until 1971 that Muennig would first arrive in the coastal California enclave of Big Sur. After attending a workshop at Esalen Institute, a counterculture retreat founded in the ’60s to explore human consciousness, the seeds of his adoration for the area were planted and he never left. "I became a hippie real fast," Muennig said in a previous Dwell interview. "I didn’t even care if I did architecture anymore."

The interiors of many of Muennig’s houses emphasize natural building materials such as wood, concrete, and stone. Plant life and nature are intrinsic to the Pfeiffer Ridge House IV.

See the full story on Dwell.com: How an Unsung Architect Gave Big Sur Its Look
Related stories: