The decade opened with a solo exhibition at the Vorpal Gallery and, in 1991, with the work many people in the Bay Area have actually stood in front of: La Vita è una Fontana — Life Is A Fountain — commissioned for De Anza College and dedicated to A. Robert DeHart, the founding president who had championed art on campus. Pecoraro had taught there since 1967 and would teach until his retirement in 1996. The Archaeo-Tectonic works of these years assembled cast stone, marble, travertine, and copper into structures that look excavated rather than built. Rebuilding the Santa Cruz studio absorbed much of his time, and by his own account he slowly lost contact with the galleries, working instead through private commissions and studio sales — until 1998, when he turned back to the wall and began the Branciforte Constructs, named for the creek that ran near the property.