• Cafe Strada, Berkeley, CA

    House in Florida, Toshika Mori

    Unit 9, Condominium 1, Sea Ranch, MLTW

     

    Gregory House, Lambertville, NJ, Jules Gregory

    Michael S. Bernard / Virtual Practice Consulting

    contact1.jpgMichael S. Bernard has built a career upon successful project and firm management. Through his firm, Virtual Practice Consulting, he acts as mentor and monitor, serving in the capacity of consulting managing principal for small design firms that do not have one. He is capable of addressing operations issues that affect the everyday life of the small design practice: development of revenue models, development of fee projections, the review and preparation of contracts, fees and schedules, the mentoring of senior staff to foster their development as effective project managers. Michael’s range of clients includes the allied disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, interior design and construction.

    Asato Communications

    Asato_web.jpgAsato Communications works with architecture and design firms to create strategic tools for connecting with clients, decision-makers and influencers. Yosh Asato’s sixteen years of experience in the architecture and design industry include a long tenure leading AIA San Francisco’s design-related programs and communications initiatives. Most recently, she served as Director of Marketing for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s San Francisco office, where her responsibilities encompassed project-related research and public relations. An active member of the design community, she co-chairs the editorial board of LINE, AIA San Francisco’s online journal.

    Bob Aufuldish / Aufuldish & Warinner

    aufuldish_0530_sm.jpgAufuldish & Warinner was formed in 1990 by partners Bob Aufuldish and Kathy Warinner. They are image makers as well as designers, frequently creating the illustrations, icons, photographs, or typefaces needed for a project. Bob Aufuldish is the original designer and cover designer for arcCA (Architecture California).

    The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion

    (NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007)

    “The landscapes, buildings, details, graphic elements, and murals of the TVA form a unified ensemble, a completeness in the classical sense, in which nothing may be added or taken away without diminishing the whole. The comprehensiveness of this vision is perhaps as important as any of its explicit messages in asserting the value of the TVA’s unprecedented transformation of a region. In the work of the TVA’s first decade, design is persuasion . . . . Of course, not everyone was convinced . . . . The intricate weave of people’s lives in the landscape does not readily admit comprehensive visions or earthly utopias. Resentment of the  TVA’s reengineering of the region lingers there. But just as certain are the benefits to the region, rich in new ways of intertwining our lives with the land.” Tim Culvahouse, editor’s introduction.

    Travel suggestions from The Tennessee Valley Authority: Design and Persuasion available as a PDF here.

    Follow on Facebook here.

    Ragina Johnson

    Ragina Johnson is a freelance graphic designer known for her sensitive use of color and form and for her incisive ability to communicate complex ideas with typography. Her work within the architecture and non-profit communities has earned her a reputation for being a supreme professional and an enthusiastic collaborator. She is interested in exploring ways to merge art and design with progressive activism to see what role they play in fostering alternative ideas. Ragina is the layout designer for arcCA (Architecture California).

    Caldwell Communications + Marketing

    Kenneth Caldwell, Caldwell Communications + Marketing, consults on both strategic planning and implementation. His philosophy is based on the idea that successful marketing for professional services is a result of effective and targeted communication. Kenneth has placed articles in Architectural Record, Architecture, arcCA (Architecture California), ArchNewsNow, Building Design & Construction, Contract, Interior Design, Metropolis, Modern Steel Construction, San Francisco Chronicle, and Urban Land, as well as other trade and consumer publications. His own writing has appeared in Architectural Record,  arcCA, Design Book Review, L.A. Architect, Landscape Architecture, and LINE.

    Once Again by the Pacific: Sea Ranch Condo I

    Lisa Findley, co-author (Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2001)

    “If you spend only one weekend at the condominium, the unit to rent is Charles Moore’s own, number 9 . . . . Let the others take the loft beds . . . . Volunteer for the window seat. There is surely no finer place to wake up in the morning, overlooking the edge of the bluff, with the surf surging around huge rocks where sea lions are also waking, as the mist dissolves and the sun breaks through the fog . . . . This place, secure and comfortable, and yet on the edge and also reaching beyond the edge, beckons the moment you arrive. And that is the crucial moment, . . . since the weekend itself is hardly more than an extended arrival, ending in a last-minute departure. It is not only for the sake of the preservation of the landscape that the condominium does not encourage you to spill out onto the lawn with your Weber grill and your whiffle ball. You have no time for such things. Instead you find, packed into the simple volumes, a complex set of spaces that allows two people to begin a conversation without preliminaries, or a half-dozen people to sit down to a meal in a setting that is contained and yet open, obliquely, to the sea.”

    Reprinted in Judging Architectural Value: A Harvard Design Magazine Reader.

    Click here for a PDF of the full article.

    Andrea Kahn / designCONTENT

    andrea b-w 4b_1.jpgAndrea Kahn, founding principal of designCONTENT, brings over 22 years of experience teaching architects and urban designers to articulate, elucidate and graphically demonstrate the merits of strong design ideas. Kahn has taught widely in the U.S. and abroad, including at Columbia University and the Yale School of Architecture. Her consulting practice offers strategic presentation and communication expertise to design professionals. She provides project-based (competition submissions, client meetings, public presentations, lectures, etc.) and process-based (communication between design team members, designer-consultant collaboration, presentation formulas/templates, etc) services.

    Lisa Findley

    Findley_headshot_bw.jpgbuilding_change.jpgAn expert in cross-cultural design, Lisa Findley is a distinguished international educator; advisor to the Province of Yunnan, China, on the intersection between historic preservation and tourism; and architect with a background in environmental policy and political science. Her work connects cultural geography, anthropology, postcolonial studies, landscape architecture, natural history, and cartography. Author of Building Change: Architecture, Politics and Cultural Agency and Contributing Editor, Architectural Record, she is a professor of architecture at California College of the Arts.

    Looking Backward: Architectural Theory Since the 1960s

    (Design Book Review, Fall 2000)

    Review of Theories and Manifestoes of Contemporary Architecture, edited by Charles Jencks and Karl Kropf; Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory, 1965-1995, edited by Kate Nesbitt; and Architecture Theory since 1968,edited by K. Michael Hays (Design Book Review, Fall 2000)

    “As I was pondering the years these books cover, the invitation for my twenty-fifth high school reunion arrived in the mail, prompting, as such coincidences will in midlife, questions: Is this my architectural life? Can I claim the familiar but at times uncongenial legacy described in these anthologies as my own? Must I? One does, after all, want to belong, to have been part of the memorable movements of one’s time. To have been present at the beginning of something—the first days of the Fillmore, or CBGB, or postmodernism. Perhaps this is one reason we write theory: to certify our place amidst the contingencies of our time. Remember that day? What a time that was. I was there. The flip side, of course, is that people are already starting to talk about deconstruction the way people talk about Woodstock.”

    Click here for a PDF of the full article.

    Mitchell Schwarzer, PhD

    Schwarzer_headshot_1_bw.jpgzoom_scape.jpgProfessor and Chair of Visual Studies at California College of the Arts, Mitchell Schwarzer is a noted historian and scholar and author of over fifty articles in journals ranging from Harvard Design Magazine to Dwell; and of three books: Zoomscape: Architecture in Motion and Media; Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: History and Guide; and German Architectural Theory and the Search for Modern Identity.

    Clark Kellogg / Collective Invention

    Clark Kellogg is a partner with Erika Gregory, Arnold Wasserman, and Fiona Hovenden in Collective Invention, which inspires novel responses to complex problems in business as well as pressing local, national and global social issues. Clark focuses his work around hybrid uses of design strategy in communication, new media, organizational leadership, and facility design and planning.

    Pierluigi Serraino

    ID_Pierluigi_Serraino_Portrait01_2.jpgAs Kenneth Caldwell has written, “Pierluigi Serraino is more than an architectural historian and cultural critic—he’s a treasure hunter. He uncovers 20th-century architectural gems for the rest of us, and the resurgence of interest in mid-century modernism, in part, can be linked to his book, Modernism Rediscovered, which brought unknown images from photographer Julius Shulman’s incredible archive into the light. His new book, NorCalMod, does something similar, but also argues that modernism was alive and well in Northern California when everybody thought that only shingles were in vogue.

    “In NorCalMod, Serraino uses the 20th century situation in Northern California to explore larger themes about modern architecture, including the impact of media, the power of the available photographic image, and the influence of a dominant architectural elite in the public’s understanding of architectural culture.”

    Other books by Pierluigi Serraino include Eero Saarinen and History of Form*Z.

    Carol Miller / RED PENTAMETER

    Miller_Headshot.jpgCarol Miller founded Red Pentameter in 2004 to start a new conversation about how language creates memorable identities and brands. What moves people, what we recall and what we can imagine are sparked by sensory experience. Language recreates experience: the warm cinnamon smell of home, hot asphalt in an August downpour. A PhD in English and a published poet and critic, Carol speaks to consumers as sentient beings to build meaningful brand experiences.

    Review of Kenneth Frampton, Labour, Work and Architecture: Collected Essays on Architecture and Design

    (Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2003/Winter 2004)

    “[Frampton wants us to] remember that the conditions he evokes—the definition of domain, consonance with climate, material textures—are discovered in the world not as absolute qualities but as relative ones (‘the intensity of light and darkness, heat and cold; . . . the relative inertia of the body as it traverses the floor’). The faculty required to effect such qualities is not the faculty of choosing, but that of judging. Not ‘whether,’ but ‘how much?’—how dark? how rough? (There is no such thing as a perfectly’ rough surface.)”

    Click here for a PDF of the full article.

    David Meckel, FAIA / Meckel (Design) Consulting

    Meckel_headshot_bw.jpgAn expert in campus and institutional planning and development, David Meckel, FAIA, was architecture and design coordinator for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games. He founded the interior design program at Otis Parsons and the architecture program at California College of the Arts (CCA), where he is currently Director of Research & Planning. He is, as well, Campus Architect for the University of the Pacific. David has served as the professional advisor for architectural competitions for the Contra Costa County Civic Center, the Mississippi Riverfront in Memphis, Habitat for Humanity in Charlottesville and SFMOMA’s new Rooftop Sculpture Garden. In their December 2007 issue, 7×7 Magazine named him one of the 49 Most Influential People in San Francisco. You may reach him at dmeckel@cca.edu.

    Julie D. Taylor, Hon. AIA/LA / Taylor & Company

    JulieTaylor.jpgFounded in 1994 by Julie D. Taylor, Hon. AIA/LA, Taylor & Company creates and implements proactive public relations programs for professionals, manufacturers, institutions, and organizations involved in creative design, architecture, building, furnishings, and the betterment of the built environment.

    Hello . . . Is Anybody Out There?

    (Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 1999)

    “’The ideal kind of building is one you don’t see’: this is a characteristic remark of Joseph Esherick, AIA Gold Medalist, who died this past December. His New York Times obituary begins, as if in wonder that such a thing could be, ‘Joseph Esherick, a self-effacing architect . . . .’ Esherick shares this improbable quality with a distinguished line of San Francisco Bay Area architects, from Julia Morgan to William Wurster to Jim Jennings. Of these, Wurster is the acknowledged master of the invisible building; beginning in the 1920s, he designed houses for comfortably well-to-do clients who, as a matter of principle, took care not to be conspicuous . . . . Walter Benjamin, writing in 1935—the year [Wurster’s] Gregory farmhouse was published in Architecture—made an observation that will be familiar to many readers of this magazine. He was trying to imagine the effects of the mechanical reproduction of images on our reception of works of art. What sort of difference might it make that people could pick up a color lithograph of the Mona Lisa for a few reichsmarks? Casting about for an analogy, he struck upon architecture, which, he writes, ‘has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consummated by a collectivity in a state of distraction . . . .’ Imagine the consequences for architectural theory of a proposition that asserts not Joseph Esherick’s aspiration that buildings not be attended to, but rather the inevitability that they won’t be. When has contemporary theory paused to consider this question of reception? The short answer is: it hasn’t.”

    Click here for a PDF of the full article.

    Michael Strogoff / Strogoff Consulting

    ms_photo2.jpgMichael Strogoff, AIA, has advised many of the nation’s most successful architectural, engineering and interior design firms, managed large and complex projects over a 25 year career, led firms through successful mergers, acquisitions and internal transitions, and negotiated hundreds of agreements on behalf of design professionals. Strogoff Consulting provides practice management, leadership development, ownership transition, mergers & acquisitions, and negotiation services. At the core of their services is bringing people and interests together in creative and collaborative ways.

    Adi Shamir

    Shamir_headshot.jpgOpenHouse.jpgAdi Shamir was formerly the Executive Director of the Van Alen Institute: Projects in Public Architecture and is the author of Open House: Unbound Space and the Modern Dwelling (New York: Rizzoli, 2002).