Star architect Mickey Muennig helped define the Big Sur building ethos.

If you have dipped your toes in the Esalen pools, wandered the Hawthorne Gallery or stayed at the Post Ranch Inn, you can thank Mickey Muennig for making that experience so awe inspiring. He is the eco-architect responsible for dozens of seamless combinations of structure and landscape on the Big Sur coast, and in many ways has come to personify the green, iconoclastic soul of the place.

This Saturday at 3pm, the 79-year-old will be on hand at the Henry Miller Memorial Library to sign the first monograph featuring his work, Mickey Muennig: Dreams and Realizations for a Living Architecture. It’s a lush and wonderful tome, celebrating his vision for the area and proving he was ahead of his time in his incorporation of “green” features into his designs more than 30 years ago.

While Big Sur residents know Muennig as the “white elf,” the architectural community recognizes him as a giant. He was recognized by Architectural Digest as one of the top 100 architects in the United States in 2000 and 2002.

After studying architecture under Bruce Goff at the University of Oklahoma, Muennig happened upon Big Sur in 1971. He subsequently moved there and began developing one of the most unique and site-specific architectural vernaculars in the world.

The architect Herb Greene, who also wrote the foreword to Dreams and Realizations, says, “Mickey makes strong metaphors including aspiration, a human sense of uplift and nature.”

One example of his unique architecture, Hawthorne Gallery, a temple of organic, flowing forms and spaces, is readily accessible and just a short walk from the Henry Miller Library.

THE MICKEY MUENNIG book signing happens 3pm Saturday, at Henry Miller Library, 48603 Highway 1, Big Sur. Free. www.henrymiller.org