Check Out Elisa Read Pappaterra’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Elisa Read Pappaterra.

Hi Elisa, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.

I am a licensed landscape architect based in Pasadena and the founder of studio pappaterra, a women-owned design practice working at the intersection of beauty, ecology, and resilience. Our studio focuses on landscapes within the Wildland–Urban Interface, creating gardens that reconcile fire stewardship, biodiversity, and refined residential design. Rooted in horticultural expertise and ecological intelligence, our work bridges science and art — shaping living systems that are as protective as they are poetic.

But my relationship to land began long before I called myself a landscape architect.
I was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, of Italian heritage and mixed race — a layered cultural foundation that shaped how I see the world: textured, hybrid, and beautifully complex.

My childhood unfolded outdoors. My parents believed in learning through immersion, so we traveled constantly across the island’s diverse ecologies. Nature was never scenery. It was alive, dynamic, humbling. It demanded awareness and respect.

Architecture became my first formal language because it united my love of geometry and art. I was drawn to structure, proportion, and spatial choreography. Yet even in my earliest design studios at Universidad Nacional Pedro Henríquez Ureña (UNPHU), one conviction guided me: the land must lead. Topography, climate, and cultural context were never constraints — they were generators.

After graduating from architecture school, I designed and built beachfront hospitality projects, working directly with wind, salt, sand, and vegetation. Those years revealed something to me: shaping living systems felt more reciprocal than shaping buildings. Planting design carried a different kind of authorship — slower, collaborative, responsive.

When I moved to Los Angeles to pursue a master’s degree in Metropolitan Research and Design at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI_Arc), my perspective expanded again. The city became both laboratory and classroom. I dove deeply into the plant world, beginning to understand landscapes not as static compositions, but as living communities in constant negotiation. My greatest teachers during those years — and still today — were The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens, remaining both my field guides and my sanctuaries.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?

My path has not been linear. I embarked my career as a woman in a field long dominated by men — particularly within construction environments. Authority in design rooms and on job sites was not always assumed. I learned early that clarity, preparation, and conviction must be unwavering. Competence speaks — but consistency builds trust.

Migration was another threshold. I arrived in California knowing very few people, intending to stay briefly. Instead, I built a life and a practice from the ground up. Navigating cultural differences, professional uncertainty, and the vulnerability of starting without inherited networks demanded resilience.

There were seasons when prioritizing ecology, plant intelligence, and fire-wise thinking felt niche rather than essential. I trusted that the urgency of climate change would eventually shift the conversation — and it has.

Experiencing evacuation during the Eaton Fire in my community transformed my work in ways no research alone could. Fire was no longer an abstract regional threat — it was at my doorstep. It entered my neighborhood, my conversations, my daily decisions. The distance between design and lived reality collapsed. Resilience ceased to be theoretical; it became immediate and embodied. In that moment, my purpose was clarified with unmistakable urgency.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?

Right now, I am deeply focused on advancing what resilience truly means in Southern California. For me, it is not about creating defensive landscapes — it is about cultivating regenerative ones.

Much of our work engages the Wildland–Urban Interface, where wildfire behavior, fragile ecosystems, and human habitation intersect. I see these not as opposing forces, but as systems capable of symbiosis. A well-designed landscape can reduce fire risk while restoring habitat, enriching soil health, supporting biodiversity, and stewarding water with intention.

While residential fire-wise design remains a core part of our practice, we are increasingly expanding the scope of that thinking. Our portfolio now includes institutional and community-based work — including farm-to-table initiatives — that extend our ethos from protection into nourishment, from resilience into cultural stewardship.

Whether shaping defensible space around a home or cultivating productive agricultural landscapes, the intention remains consistent: to design living systems that sustain life in every sense of the word.

Our gardens are botanically rich, climate-appropriate, and habitat-sensitive — yet meant to feel effortless. The science is embedded quietly beneath beauty. What one experiences first is light filtering through layered canopies, the rhythm of movement through space, the choreography of color, texture, and seasonality.

From concept through construction and long-term stewardship, we remain deeply involved. We collaborate closely with clients, consultants, contractors, nurseries, and maintenance teams to ensure each landscape performs — ecologically and experientially.

I often describe my approach as “from soil to soul.” It reflects a belief that landscapes shape us as much as we shape them.

Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?

Professionally, two mentors in Los Angeles profoundly shaped my trajectory: Nancy Goslee Power, founder of NGPA, and Mark Rios of RIOS.

From Nancy, I absorbed a reverence for horticultural nuance. She taught me that we can use plants like paint brushes — composing with texture, color, movement, and seasonality as an art form. Planting design, in her hands, was not decoration; it was authorship.

From Mark, I learned to think at multiple scales at once — landscape as infrastructure, culture, and refined residential art. He taught me that every issue is asking for a design solution. Constraints are invitations, and complexity is opportunity.

At studio pappaterra, I am constantly reminded that no meaningful practice is built alone. I’m deeply grateful for my team — Graham Sandelski and Ali Harwood — whose talent, dedication, and joyful presence shape our work every day.

Like me, both Graham and Ali come from architectural training, giving our studio a shared language around space, structure, and discipline. We also share global paths — having lived, studied, and worked across different continents and cultural contexts. That breadth shapes how we approach place, climate, and community. It fosters humility, curiosity, and a deep sensitivity to context.

Graham brings seasoned clarity to our projects. As a project manager, he holds complexity with calm precision. He understands how to shepherd ideas from concept through construction with rigor and foresight. His design eye is sharp and architectural, but it’s his steadiness, his ability to translate vision into built reality that anchors the studio.

Ali is a well-rounded designer with a fresh, inquisitive spirit. She brings new energy and expansive thinking to the table, constantly asking better questions and exploring unexpected possibilities. Her artistic sensibility and global perspective enrich our planting compositions and spatial choreography in ways that feel both thoughtful and alive.
Both are lifelong students, curious, deeply observant, and committed to craft. They are joyful collaborators, serious designers, and generous teammates. The studio’s success is as much theirs as it is mine. What we grow together always feels richer than anything I could grow alone.
It takes a village, and I’m lucky to call this one mine, where collaboration feels less like work and more like a privilege we get to practice every day.
Personally, I’m grateful for sunsets, ocean air, shared laughter, and the simple joy of working with my hands in the soil, constant reminders from the land itself that our collaborations are always larger than us.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.studiopappaterra.com/
• Instagram: @studio_pappaterra
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elisa-read-pappaterra-03b60710/
• Youtube: https://youtu.be/rzhceTlu8u8
• Other: https://www.studiopappaterra.com/npr-laist-interview

Image Credits
Arroyo Vista Garden for the Pasadena Showcase House of Design (2024) – by Happs Agency and Erika Ilkei-Hajós