Studio

Founded by Michael Breland and Peter Harper, Breland – Harper is a Los Angeles-based design firm that provides interdisciplinary services across residential, commercial, mixed-use, and hospitality projects.

The integration of architectural, interior, and landscape design within our studio is a founding tenet of our practice, rooted in the desire to cultivate comprehensive experiences with subtle transitions between disciplines. With particular expertise in adaptive reuse and historic preservation, our newly constructed work is also handled with the same sensitivity and awareness.

Breland-Harper’s practice begins with people – our clients, our team, our collaborators – and nature – the force that grounds and amplifies, adding depth, nuance, color, and light to all that we do. Whether at the scale of a disused factory, a house, a garden, or a chair, our work is rooted in a set of preoccupations with history, place, proportion, restraint, craft, ritual, and light, all in an effort to produce enduring design.

By being open and receptive to the world and working to understand each site's particular spirit, we craft architecture that seeks to reinforce the culture of a place and to provide a grounding force to daily life. In this way, the range of projects in which we engage allow us to convey broader ideas about how we hope to live and what we value.

Michael Breland
Founding Partner and Principal

  • Originally from Berkeley, California, Michael grew up immersed in art, social justice, and multi-cultural discourse, all fostering a lifelong passion which informs every aspect of his work. After receiving his bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Southern California and several years in New York with Manhattan firms, he spent time at Donald Judd’s Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas. Chinati’s emphasis on the integral relationship between art and the surrounding land laid the foundation for Michael’s holistic approach to design in which architecture, interiors, and landscape are inextricably linked. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he became immersed in the commercial design build world where he oversaw the design, development, and construction of commercial properties throughout Southern California.

    In 2016, Michael founded Breland - Harper, building the business over the past decade into a multidisciplinary firm with architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design studios which focus on commercial, residential, and landscape work. As a designer, he finds inspiration working across a diverse variety of scales, periods, and aesthetics.

    His work as design principal of the commercial studio has provided Michael the opportunity to champion creative office space and the greening of the commercial sector. With projects ranging from jewel box gallery/studio spaces to large urban campuses, his focus is always on eroding the limen between interior and exterior, as well as cultivating spaces which are flexible and long lived. With countless adaptive reuse projects in his portfolio, Michael relishes the opportunity to reposition historic fabric – whether reimagining an existing structure or expanding on it to create something wholly new.

    After many years of involvement, in 2023 Michael was elected board president of the non-profit organization Creative Growth, which advances the inclusion of artists with developmental disabilities in contemporary art. 

Peter Harper
Founding Partner and Principal

  • Born and raised in Northern California, Peter’s strong family connections to art, history, and culture have informed a lifelong passion for the built environment and the intricacies of place making. Peter holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California, a M.S. in Historic Preservation, and a M. Arch. from Columbia University. Further study led him to study architecture and urban planning at the Politecnico di Milano and architectural conservation at the Dipartimento di Architettura dell'Università degli Studi Roma Tre. His fieldwork has taken him to New Mexico where he was involved with earthen architectural conservation at San Miguel Chapel and to the West Bank where he was included in the RIWAQ conservation workshop on the adaptive reuse of 18th century Ottoman throne villages. His written research focuses on cultural aesthetics and their influence on architectural conservation. These immersive explorations of the past underpin his approach to design. For Peter, restraint is key – from considering every aspect of a project’s distinct identity before intervening to recognizing that a design need not be loud or extensive to be impactful. 

    Prior to founding Breland-Harper, Peter was with Atelier AM, overseeing residential projects in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and California. The dexterity that came with designing in a variety of idioms, for a number of different climates and landscapes, is evident in current projects that include sensitive restorations of period homes in a variety of aesthetics to newly built contemporary works.

    At Breland-Harper he serves as lead designer on each of the firm’s residential projects, as well as oversees work in the interior design, landscape architecture, and hospitality studios. Peter cultivates close relationships with clients to draft narratives that synthesize their needs, present and future, avoiding a priori understandings and attempting to meet each project on its own terms. Forging an understanding of his clients, their needs and their wants, as well as the particular context – site, community, landscape – is the basis of his practice.