California architect Harry Gesner designed dozens of homes, often finding inspiration in nature. (Steven Lippman)

To design a great house, California architect Harry Gesner believed, you needed to spend time at the property, not at the drawing board. While working on a home for one of his high-profile clients — a logging baron, a swimsuit magnate, a Hollywood legend with eight Oscar nominations to his name — he would spend hours at the site, studying the wind and sun and seeking inspiration from the view.

For a Malibu beach house he was designing in the 1950s, he took to the sea, paddling out on his surfboard to examine the property from a spot beyond the wave break. From there he made the initial drawings for what became his most famous building, the Wave House, using a grease pencil to sketch its curving, wavelike roof directly onto his longboard...

The Washington Post: Harry Gesner, California architect in tune with nature, dies at 97