I’m the one in plaid.
As a Bay Area native and daughter to a Japanese father and German/Bulgarian mother who met in the sixties, I appreciate my multi-cultural background. It’s formed my lens and I feel the blend inevitably appears in my work. My style has been described as clean and clear with an attitude that less is more; though the less is carefully choreographed and achieved through the play of light, architectural cues and details.
My path to architecture was circuitous, like many good things in life. I studied at UC Berkeley; a finance and accounting major who’s passion for the built world was ignited in an introduction environmental design class taught by renowned professor and design writer, Lars Lerup. After many satisfying years in the public accounting and finance world, I found myself back at Berkeley in 2001 working towards a master’s degree in architecture. There, my focus evolved from historical preservation to adaptive re-use and the study of architecture and its relationship with time.
Today, I am interested in architecture that brings people together and facilitates varying interactions. I prefer the residential scale and the intimate relationship my clients have with their spaces as we work together in defining how they live. In all types of projects, it’s important for me to know that what I am designing is having a positive, unique, even surprising, effect on those who occupy the space.
I have lived in San Francisco and the South Bay, raised my family in Oakland and currently reside in Santa Cruz, CA.