the Rome Prize for his work in landscape architecture by the American Academy in Rome. Design innovation When Church started practicing, the Neoclassical style was still the predominant landscape design style. Thomas' design education at UC Berkeley and Harvard, along with his travels to gardens in Europe, gave him ample training in Classical and Renaissance garden traditions. However, Church is renowned as a pioneer in American landscape architect for introducing the Modernist architecture and art movements into landscape design. After WW II, other designers added to what later became known as the "California Style" of gardens. Some of them apprenticed in his design studio, including Robert Royston and Lawrence Halprin. Church outlined four principles for his design process in his 1955 book Gardens Are For People." They are: Unity — the consideration of the design as a whole, integrating the house and its gardens with a free flow between them. Function — the relation of the outdoor recreational and social areas to their interior counterparts, and of the outdoor service areas to the household's needs, to please and serve the people who live in them. Simplicity — upon which rests the aesthetic and economic success of the design. Scale — relating the different design parts, features, and areas to one another, to create a whole an integrated landscape design. Church used the Modernist design principles for freedom of elements, such as the forms of spaces and features, and a sense of movement. When possible, he favored creating multiple viewpoints, instead of a traditional single axis. "A garden should have no beginning and no end," he wrote in Gardens Are for People, "and should be pleasing when seen from any angle, not only from the house." He could also use historicist design principles when the site called for it, such as the formal lines of the Memorial Courtyard (1965) beside the San Francisco Opera House. Another design element Church is renowned for is the "outdoor room," creating sub-areas for outdoor living as distinct places within the whole landscape. They were different than those of Italian Renaissance gardens with a separation of house and garden, his outdoor rooms interacted with the house, with a free flow between the two "Tommy represented freedom from 'decorating' a house," said former Sunset editor Walter Doty, shortly before Church's death. "Landscaping had meant gussying up structures that weren't worth it. Tommy was a 'behavioral' landscaper .