Varied textures and scales of wood create a new identity for this formerly bland, languishing office building.  This commercial refurbishment in Danville, a small Northern California town, transforms and expands the existing space with a bold volumetric statement that remains sensitive to the materials, history, and scale of the neighborhood. As a study in the physical layers of the building envelope, the design strategy adds a new language, cloaking the banal existing building and instead aesthetically linking to Danville’s “San Francisco Stick” architectural heritage.  This late 19th-century style used simple wood strips and rectangular bay windows to decorate facades.  Although the style is easily recognized for its decorative qualities, it is best understood as a result of wood technology of…

Siprosa School Nairobi provides global progressive education for elementary age students in Nairobi. The school’s spatial needs included a range of adaptable classrooms, outdoor learning environments, and a strong connection to the natural environment. Sitting at the edge of a vast nature preserve, the site is both urban and wild. Responding to the need for both intimately scaled teaching spaces and open outdoor spaces, our spatial strategy loosely clusters together spaces of varying sizes and enclosure. These stacked and shifted voids then create interstitial spaces that foster interaction among the school community while also providing natural cooling. At the urban scale, the collection of spaces is wrapped by a terra cotta screen that connects diverse spaces, buffers the school from…

To transform an aging and uninspiring collection of tilt-up concrete buildings, we partnered as associate architect with Studio Sarah Willmer Architecture (design lead and architect of record) to overhaul the interiors and create a more cohesive neighborhood within Google’s larger campus. This campus re-design transforms a series of dark and disorganized spaces into vibrant workspace, landscape, and amenities linked through a bold formal strategy, dubbed the Linking Path and Caterpillar. The Linking Path and Caterpillar are spatial and material strategies that simultaneously provide identity at the campus scale and experiential conditions at the building scale. The Caterpillar is a 350 foot long occupiable volume. Its strong physical presence stretches across all 3 buildings, linking the complex program and acting as…

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To re-claim unused outdoor space and support our community, we worked with the city of Berkeley on a Parklet Template, a webinar, and pro- bono design services. With the pandemic making outdoor space more valuable than ever, the abundant and unused outdoor space devoted to cars is counter to our values.  We believe that the public realm should contribute positively to our social, cultural, and economic experience.  Since restaurants have been so impacted by the pandemic induced shutdown, we used our design skills and construction connections to help them build outdoor seating.  As a low cost conversion of parking spaces into usable outdoor spaces, these Parklets are a positive response to the challenges of the Pandemic. To activate the streetscape…

The project is an extensive renovation of an existing 3,800 square foot space in Mill Valley into a showroom for the Henrybuilt, a high-end Seattle-based system kitchen, cabinetry, and furniture company. The former autobody shop’s original concrete masonry unit structure remains, while the interior walls, fixtures, lighting, mechanical systems, doors, windows, and finishes were completely updated and renovated. Henrybuilt designed and provided all cabinetry, casework, and furniture. Emphasis on the versatility of Henrybuilt products is key to the showroom’s design. The space is organized around three new interior dividing walls that create a series of “rooms” to optimize the products’ visibility and location. In contrast to Henrybuilt’s other showroom in Manhattan, which has a highly refined and finished interior, the…

Description Forthcoming

Description Forthcoming

An existing 37,500sf tilt-up concrete building was incrementally renovated over the years as occupant needs evolved. Sidell Pakravan Architects was asked to reimagine the packed-in, unorganized building into a vibrant workplace hub for two distinct teams sharing core amenities through the building. Each team had a unique identity within the company. Color was used as a rapid way to differentiate the spaces each team would primarily occupy. Existing voids within the two-story building became focal to the design, presenting opportunities for the two identities to bleed into one another. These zones of exchange became natural locations to gather building-wide amenities around, fostering a sense of community within the building. Lounges, dining areas and kitchenettes were stacked on both stories surrounding…