Sometimes a building is just practical; other times, when it achieves the status of art, it is more like sculpture we inhabit. And in the hands of Pauma Valley architect Kendrick Bangs Kellogg, it is the latter.

Influenced by the ideas of America's most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, Kellogg's work takes several of Wright's ideas a few steps further. Like Wright, Kellogg believes a structure should harmonize with its site and surroundings, the foundation of what is called organic architecture.

"Ken Kellogg's body of work today stands alone as some of the best post-Wright organic architecture in the world," commented Keith York in an e-mail. York, a director of programming for KPBS, has studied Kellogg's architecture and is editor of the Web site www.modernsandiego.com, about San Diego architecture.

"The blessing and the curse is that Kellogg's work is best represented throughout San Diego -- as residents of this region, we can revel in his designs while the rest of the world only sees his structures in coffee-table books."

Kellogg, 72, was born and raised in Mission Beach or, as he writes for his Web site, "on an east shore of the Pacific Rim at longitude 117W9 and latitude 32N44 near San Diego on the west coast of California in the country of Oceanus." Kellogg was the younger of two boys born to a San Diego radiologist who was a driver in the Army's ambulance corps in World War I and a mother who was a nurse, raised in San Bernardino, the daughter of a miner.

Right from the beginning, though, he showed an aptitude for construction.

"I was always good at building things," he said, recalling a picture of himself at the age of about 7, standing in front of his first structure, a fort or a clubhouse, holding a rabbit. He didn't dream of growing up to be an architect in those days, though; he was going to be an astronaut or an astrophysicist. "That was the big thing in those days," he said. "I liked stars. I figured we were going to the moon, and it sounded easy."

But in April 1955, while on Easter vacation from attending the University of Colorado, Kellogg drove to Phoenix and Scottsdale, Ariz., with a group of students, where he heard architect Wright speak and met him for the first time. Wright taught organic architecture, a style loosely defined as evolving naturally out of context and from the relationship among the site, the building and the client's needs. This simple meeting would have a great influence on him.

Switching career paths, Kellogg enrolled at UC Berkeley to study architecture, but with one semester left before graduation, he returned to San Diego. There he met Russell and Vergie Babcock, who were renting a home from a family friend in Mission Beach.

The couple originally hired him to design an addition to a rest home in National City that they called a "sanatorium," but then they bought a small lot off San Luis Rey Place in San Diego.

"They had a beautiful rendering by Frank Lloyd Wright," said Kellogg, adding that the Wright plans were never realized. "They wanted an A-frame with a copper roof -- it was all triangles."

The result, designed by Kellogg, was the Babcock Residence, an unusual piece of modern architecture built in 1959 at 2695 Bayside Walk in San Diego.

During this time, Kellogg also began a long working relationship with metalworker Bill Slatton. "Bill was a welder from Texas who had worked under Mr. Wright in his last few years" at the architect's Wisconsin compound, Taliesin, between 1956 and '59, Kellogg said.

Slatton's designs in metal can be seen in a number of Kellogg's early residential projects. He also worked with Kellogg on a house for Becky McClintock in Kawa Kona, Hawaii.

Kellogg calls the Kona house, which has been featured on the Travel Channel and rents out for more than $2,000 a week, his breakaway house. Where much of Wright's work featured horizontal planes, "I moved into circular lines," said Kellogg. "He (Wright) was getting there."

The home is pictured on Kellogg's Web site, where it is described as "three clusters of shells, two of which rest on a large platform of lava rock surrounded by crystalline pools with views of the ocean." It also has only screens for windows to take advantage of the natural ocean breezes.

Then in the early '60s, Charthouse Restaurant owner Buzzy Bent contacted Kellogg to design the restaurant chain's Santa Barbara location. From there, he also remodeled the chain's Aspen, Colo.; Sun Valley, Idaho; Redondo Beach; and Maui, Hawaii, locations. The Orchids and Onions program, which celebrates the best and worst of San Diego architecture, gave him an Orchid for the Rancho Mirage Charthouse. The restaurant also won a Vintage Pinot Noir Award in 1994 for its energy-efficient design.

"I put 4-inch urethane foam on the roof and then sunk it (the building) into the ground," he said, adding that the clients complained about the design costing so much. But in 1981, the restaurant was featured on the cover of Restaurant Design magazine. And according to Kellogg, who paraphrased a corporate officer of the restaurant chain, "To change Kellogg's design is to jeopardize our investment."

Bent, who had worked on projects of La Jolla architect Frederick Liebhart, was also fascinated with organic architecture. With Kellogg's first restaurant designs, this style would in part define the chain's image as well as Kellogg's.

"My philosophy is similar to Mr. Wright's," said Kellogg, who refers to him as "mister." "Not in elevation, but as nature as the source … you enhance a site, not create it. The more unusual the site, the more I let it determine the design," he said.

Kellogg said he knows his head-turning architecture has deeply affected those who live in it. He has talked about this with many of his clients, he said, such as the Grahams, who are mathematicians at UC San Diego and live in the Kellogg-designed Atoll House in La Jolla. Quoted in Decor & Style magazine, the Grahams said their circular home is harmonious and peaceful and clearly ahead of its time. Ron Graham said he and his wife immediately fell in love with the home's geometric patterns. "We are living in this circular universe," he said.

The late Dr. Sam Yen, a well-known neuroendocrinologist from UC San Diego, admired Kellogg and had him build a home in La Jolla for him. The Yen residence, also known as the Poppy House, is for sale for nearly $3 million. It has a roof with integral solar water heated panels, and windows with views that in other homes would be obstructed by walls or beams. York describes it on modernsandiego.com as having "undulating laminated wood roof beams, sculptural poured formed concrete and hypnotic geometric tile."

Also well-known locally are the Surfer's Home in Pacific Beach, which undulates like the ocean; Wingsweep Home in Temecula; the Doolittle residence in Joshua Tree; and the Institute of Organic Architecture on the south side of Palomar Mountain.

"For decades now … Ken has demonstrated his philosophy time and again," wrote Keith York, the architecture critic, in response to an e-mail for this story.

"Each project has only built on his reputation, and added value to a body of work that is unparalleled in the field of architecture. Ken is and always has been close to nature, close to his clients, and close to the materials he uses. His influences, now decades old among Wright's first wave of disciples, have advanced well beyond rough sawn redwood and triangulated glass. His architecture is a gift to us all."

Though the materials have changed over the years and Kellogg says he is inclined to use more concrete and less wood these days, his vision that design should be environmentally friendly hasn't changed. He doesn't think much of the Richard Meier-designed Getty Center in Los Angeles, and he thinks the windmill farms have ruined the desert and "should be sent back to wherever they came from."

Kellogg lives in Pauma Valley with his wife, Franeva, a former high school classmate whom he married in 1994. He is at work on an extensive remodel of their house and is doing much of the manual labor himself. He also steadfastly refuses to design anything on the computer. He said he still can survey a lot in three hours with a tape measure and $20 worth of equipment, and still is designing homes for private clients.

"If they don't predetermine it, we can create something for the site. It's not like buying a car … It's a work of art," he said. "And the value is in what it does for you. It does change people's lives."

Contact staff writer Ruth Marvin Webster at (760) 740-3527 or rwebster@nctimes.com.