I have a project in my studio at the moment where the design of a new master bathroom is a key aspect of the project. We are adding on a new family room and master bedroom, and converting one of the existing bedrooms into the master bathroom. The existing bedroom […]
Design Ideas
62 posts
This past weekend, I went to see The World of Charles and Ray Eames exhibit at the Oakland Museum of California. It was great! It covers their careers in design from the 1940’s into the late 70’s. Several of their chair designs are considered modern icon’s and even classics of […]
October is National Architecture Month, also referred to as “Archtober”. Last year, to commemorate the month, I posted something about architecture every single day of the month. It was not easy to keep up a daily posting schedule. This month, I intend to maintain my mostly weekly posting schedule. This […]
What do architects do when they travel? Mostly we look at buildings. We want to see something wonderful, beautiful, different. We want to see how problems were solved in elegant ways, or how materials were detailed. We want to be inspired. I was in Boston for a day recently. I […]
I was flipping through my sketch books looking for something, and found this page. I paused to look at it. I don’t recall sketching these ideas out. Given the title of the page, I was clearly just getting an idea out of my head and on to paper. Some times […]
The American Institute of Architects (AIA), one of the professional organizations for architects, has a program they call “look up” to encourage non-architects to look up at the buildings around them to see what architects do. I recently had reason to visit the San Francisco City Hall, to record a […]
I have shared images of this project before. We are wrapping up schematic design right now. The design we came up with worked very well, but came in over budget. Working with the Church to set and determine their priorities, they determined that the new structure that will define the […]
The San Francisco Building Department sponsors an event called the San Francisco Seismic Safety Fair. This year the fair will be held this Wednesday, June 13. It is being held at the Bill Graham Auditorium at the Civic Center from 10am until 4pm. The fair will have exhibitors from various […]
A while back I was interviewed by Emily Landes, a journalist, who was writing an article about trends in apartment design. It was an interesting to be interviewed and the subject was engaging. This month the article she was writing, “Find The Flow”, appeared in SF Apartment Magazine, the monthly […]
October is National Architecture Month, also known in some circles as Archtober. To commemorate the month, I am going to post a brief post every day of the month. You may have noticed that I have illustrated my Archtober posts with images that would fall into two broad categories: classical […]
The following images were made this week as I was working on a small cottage project that was recently re-started by the clients after a break of almost 2 years. In the intervening years, the building code changed and the Oakland’s planning regulations changed, so we had to make some […]
With the recent changes to state law regarding Accessory Dwelling Units, you can see how various municipalities are dealing with changing their planning ordinances to come into compliance with the state legislation. In Oakland, they are allowing development within a house, and development attached to a house. They are allowing […]
Projects are rarely, if ever, perfect from their immediate conception. Some come together quickly. Others take longer. This project in Berkeley is somewhere in between. But it is coming together fairly quickly. We are working within the city’s planning regulations for Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs). The projects need to be […]
Do you like watching HGTV or DIYTV? If you do, you are going to LOVE Grand Designs, a British TV series now in it’s 17th season. I discovered it streaming on NetFlix. I believe the current season may be available on Hulu. Some episodes are available on YouTube. It’s worth […]
I kicked off a new project about a month ago. It is for a backyard cottage, an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU), in Berkeley. We have been working on getting the plan arrangements right. Still in Schematic Design, I’m starting to look at what this little house might look like. The […]
Is 2017 the year you’re going to remodel your kitchen? It is dark and disconnected from the rest of the house. It doesn’t have any storage, and there’s no place for the kids to the the homework. I recently came across this article about 10 steps to take when planning […]
My favorite house in San Francisco, at least from the outside, is a small single story house built in the classical style. It is a small cottage, built as a classical temple. It is dwarfed by the neighboring buildings which were built years after it was built. I suspect that […]
For something different – a TED talk by Roman Mars, about the design of city flags. (Just skip the ad that’s attached at the start.) Not only is this talk interesting, entertaining, and informative, it is also a great talk about design. Talking about design is hard to do. Roman […]
A couple of weeks ago I visited the project in San Leandro which is currently under construction. I took some pictures and realized that this project provides an example of a principal of design I call “Small Changes Can Make A Big Difference”. In this case, opening up the wall between […]
Each architect find’s inspiration in different places and from different things. Sometimes that inspiration is easy to spot. Take, for instance, this bank building in Grass Valley, California. It looks very much a civic building to our North American eyes. It’s got the columns and the dome. It has to […]