Matson Britton Architects

Matson Britton Architects is an architecture firm in Santa Cruz, California. The practice designs coastal, residential, and commercial projects, with work spanning new homes, major remodels and additions, accessory dwelling units, multi-residence buildings, and a mixed-use warehouse and office building. Its projects have taken shape throughout the County of Santa Cruz, the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas, southern and eastern California, Kauai, and Idaho. The firm holds a rating of 5.00 from the customers who have reviewed it.

Cove Britton, a native of Northern California, graduated with a five-year professional degree from USC, and Martha Matson was finishing a Master's of Architecture at UCLA when the two met in a Los Angeles office. Martha, originally from Boston, holds a BA in art history and sculpture from McGill University in Montreal. After training for a few years in Los Angeles and marrying, they moved to Santa Cruz in 1990 and founded Matson Britton Architects. Since then the firm has produced more than 50 notable coastal projects in Santa Cruz County.

The architects describe their work as responsive to light and to the specific site a building is designed upon, playing with form, texture, and color and blurring the line between outside and in. Cove's detailing and design strengths reflect growing up around construction, while Martha brings the insight of a sculptor to client-driven projects. Travel in Europe and Asia has shaped how the firm thinks about climate and local materials. Two Matson Britton projects were featured in a nationally released book, "The New Solar Home," with one of the homes on the cover. The firm is well-versed in current State laws governing housing and holds that the need for more housing is real.

The office sits on North Branciforte Avenue, a short walk from Soquel Avenue and Broadway, and about a fifth of a mile from Central Park, Montessori School Midtown, and Water Street.

For clients along the Santa Cruz coast weighing a new home, an addition, or an ADU, the firm brings more than three decades of local practice to the design of the site itself.