I am a designer with broad experience working on Bay Area home, restaurant and school projects since 2014. I am a team player with a keen attention to detail and persistent curiosity looking for a place where I can focus my energy, learn from colleagues and lead projects. I believe in architecture’s social potential and responsibility, and I want to meet people with unique insights and a shared ethic.
bcooperative, San Francisco, CA, US, Associate Designer
When I began working with Ben/bcooperative, I was completing my undergraduate degree in Studio Art. I had several months of construction experience and I was eager to dive into architectural design and learn how a project goes from an idea to built materiality. With Ben, I learned a lot and quickly as I was exposed to many facets of residential and restaurant projects.
Early on, I made furniture and building models, and I also built a couple furniture pieces. We worked closely with fabricators, coordinating and detailing the various elements for restaurants, bars and beer gardens. I developed our designs in AutoCAD, the office standard, supplemented by 3D modeling.
I picked up on the bcooperative project delivery process, and I was involved in client meetings for several projects. I developed a project management spreadsheet to track the many elements of a large outdoor venue in West Sacramento.
After earning my masters in architecture, I returned to bcooperative to help renovate and transition into a new office space and increase our project portfolio. During this period of time, I streamlined several office procedures transitioning the office file system to Google Workspace and setting up our online presence. During this period of time I helped secure several contracts and carry several projects in all phases. I particularly enjoyed designing a coffee truck for a local coffee shop, preparing fabrication drawings for a steel parklet and experimenting with point cloud renderings for a beer garden expansion and a Calistoga vacation home.
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, US, Teacher's Assistant
I was the teacher’s assistant for the Design Media 2 course taught by Adam Marcus in the Spring of 2020.
Coming from a family of teachers, this TA experience reminded me of the joy I find in connecting with others through learning and sharing. It was wonderful to revisit the content of this class after having taken it myself a year previously, and I was amazed by the beautiful and unique work that each student developed through this parametric iterative process.
This course covered advanced drawing and modeling techniques including parametric design and digital fabrication.
I guided students through tutorials in Rhino 3D with a focus on parametric modeling with Grasshopper component definitions and RhinoCAM CNC toolpathing. I also offered feedback on representation style and graphic clarity with guidance in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.
Adam Marcus is the founder of Variable Projects, an award winning computational design office in Oakland, CA.
450 Architects inc., San Francisco, CA, US, Associate Designer
I began providing independent as-built services in 2017 under the mentorship of David Bushnell, the cofounder of 450 Architects. His partner Richard Parker brought me on a year later, and he gave me the opportunity to work on the Bushnell Center for Athletics and Community at the San Francisco Waldorf High School, David’s last gift which I had seen him laboring over for years.
At 450, I enjoyed the collaborative environment of the architecture office and I absorbed the knowledge of my colleagues. Richard gave me interesting projects that challenged me in unique ways and helped me develop various capacities. I developed a conceptual design conveying the sustainability and permaculture strategies essential to the practice. I prepared permit sets. I worked with clients through schematic design and development. I revised construction documents and visited job sites for documentation and weekly meetings with the client and general contractor.
Over two periods of work with 450, I saw the Bushnell Center develop from David’s inspiration to a thorough set of construction documents being used in the field. Today, the flowering vines are growing thick on the Eastern facade, and the sun travels from the bay window to the courtyard garden, my contribution, where students always sit to enjoy lunch. This project instilled in me a burning interest in architecture for education and community that carried into my studies at CCA, and remains a major motivation in my professional development. Thanks to David, Richard and my 450 colleagues who guided me in my growth as a designer.
Studio for Urban Projects, San Francisco, CA, US, Associate Designer
In preparation for my first semester of my graduate architecture program, I briefly joined Rick Johnson at the Studio for Urban Projects to help out on a couple projects. I built a physical model for a modern California home on a sloping site in Marin county. The model was used to convey the design concept to the client and it informed the daylighting strategy. We also did a kitchen renovation for a home on a winding road in Mill Valley. I enjoyed seeing how Rick streamlined these residential projects with the efficient use of BIM supplemented by analog design exercises.
Kevin Stamm, General Contractor, San Francisco, CA, US, Builder
I began working with Kevin Stamm for the summer and winter holidays during my undergraduate studies. Kevin is a general contractor in San Francisco, CA, who has been converting his two story home into a three story passive house. He has put everything into this passion project, always working to the highest degree of precision and taking every opportunity to teach himself a new skill.
When I joined the project we were laying out the joists for the second floor and framing the third floor walls. I touched each layer of the wall assembly through air sealing the EPS exterior insulation. Kevin and I installed all the windows averaging about one window per day. I quickly learned that Kevin’s standards of excellence were unattainable for most people including himself, but that the true gift of the experience was that every task was a masterclass in experiential learning, intellectual rigor and self awareness. Kevin is so devoted to the craft of construction that it is elevated to an art.
This rigorous hands-on learning has given me a heightened understanding and appreciation for the craft and work of construction that is essential to realizing what we design. A wall section detail is an abstraction that can only be fully appreciated with an awareness of the materials and processes by which it might be assembled.
California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA, US, MArch, Master of Architecture
I began my masters in architecture with a good sense of what architecture could be in practice, but with an intense curiosity about what it might be in the broader sense. I was motivated by architecture's capacity to foster community and wellbeing, to celebrate cultural heritage and to mediate our relationship to the natural environment. I wanted to understand the history of these architectural problems, and the relationship to materiality, tectonics and the development of form.
The curriculum at CCA was a masterful progression of parallel courses in design, building science, history/theory and design media. I greatly enjoyed the abundant opportunities for physical model making in the first year. The building sciences series was particularly rewarding as the concepts layered in complexity with each semester from materials and structures to energy and systems. I especially enjoyed the component assemblies course that began with precedent tectonic studies that informed the development of a rehabilitation center called the Notch.
My time at CCA showed me that I could carry a project from concept to full design following a variety of design methodologies. It was rewarding to collaborate with colleagues on studio projects or just in discussions of theory and concepts. While I had arrived at CCA with one or two rigid ideas of architectural practice, I left with a deepened appreciation for the variety of ways in which architecture is practiced and can have a positive impact.
Cornell College, Mount Vernon, IA, US, Bachelors, Studio Art - Pre-Architecture
I chose to pursue a liberal arts degree coming out of high school because I wanted to explore the motives of human behavior, the power of creativity and what constitutes meaningful participation in society. My studies focused on art history, studio art, but I took full advantage of the liberal arts environment to dip into most departments, particularly psychology and sociology. I also did well in math and sciences which rounded off the suggested pre-architecture courses.
Mount Vernon, Iowa, was a beautiful place to focus on studies, engage with the school community and develop deep friendships with people from diverse perspectives and regions of the US and the world. I was part of Eyes of the World, an international student group, and BACO, the black student union on campus. I especially enjoyed my daily work study in the interlibrary loan office where the exchange of knowledge was fulfilled not only in mailing books, but in lively conversation of social issues among colleagues.
I chose to major in studio art after two years of intense study in the art department with captivating courses in art history and advanced sculpture courses. I loved exploring materials in sculptural ceramics and casting, and my thesis project verged on the architectural in a series of large coiled clay sculptures that explored movement and transformation under the competing forces of gravity and levity.
