Design, Trends
October 18, 2012
By Amy Feezor
Driven by a mission to make sustainable design accessible, architect, designer, and eco advocate Michelle Kaufmann is someone who is making a real difference. Awarded for her green home design principles and often credited for helping pioneer the green prefab category, Michelle and her firm specialize in sustainable lifestyle design for single family homes, eco-luxury resorts, and multi-family communities. In addition, she consults with builders, developers, and architecture firms on sustainability and prefabrication, most recently with Google. Here, “the Henry Ford of green homes” (as she’s been called by the Sierra Club) tells us, in her words, about her background, her commitment to finding sustainable solutions, and the studio space she’s thoughtfully created along with her team in San Francisco. Read more
Balance, Design
October 6, 2011
By Cerentha Harris
Mark Jensen is the principal of San Francisco-based architecture firm whose work includes projects like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s award-winning rooftop sculpture garden (above) to lovingly detailed hillside homes. Here we take a tour of his homes and learn more about a shift in the way we work that informs his residential designs.
Above: Mark Jensesn at work. Photo: Jensen Architects
You are the principal architect of an 18-person firm that was established in 1990. Can you tell us about what drew you to architecture? Two things: first, my German grandfather hand-crafted a collection of solid maple building blocks for his grandson (thankfully, he didn’t have the tools in his garage-shop to make “blobs”). Second, my high school geometry teacher (a “recovering” architect himself) took one look at my hyper-organized class binder and said to me: “Mark, you are going to be an architect.”
Above: The Kokoris residence. Photos: Cesar Rubio.
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