Full Time Architecture & Community Design Faculty
Hana Mori Böttger joined the Architecture and Community Design program in 2005. She teaches physics, design, structural analysis and construction materials courses for architecture students. Hana's research interests involve low-cost engineering techniques. She studies the use of inexpensive fabric between courses of adobe bricks, allowing much higher energy dissipation and inherent warning mechanisms by adobe walls during seismic activity. full bio
Tanu Sankalia was trained as an architect and urban designer at the Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (C.E.P.T), Ahmedabad and the University of California, Berkeley. His range of professional work spanning San Francisco and Mumbai includes urban design plans, mixed-use developments, housing projects, residential architecture, and campus planning and architecture. full bio
Seth Wachtel is the Director of the Architecture and Community Design Program in the Department of Art and Architecture and is Co-Director of the Garden Project Living-Learning Community at the University of San Francisco. He received his March from UC Berkeley in 1987 and has worked in architecture and construction in India, Colombia, Israel, Mexico, Nicaragua, Zambia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. His focus is low-income housing and the development of innovative construction techniques that produce sustainable and aesthetically and culturally appropriate buildings for human environments. full bio
Adjunct Architecture & Community Design Faculty
Renata Ancona completed
her architectural studies summa cum laude at the University of Florence, as
well as architectural, urban design, and structural engineering studies at the
University of Pescara and U.C. Berkeley. Her work at Studio Peek Ancona is
characterized by a contemporary aesthetic that focuses on a refinement of
ecological materials founded on academic research. Her restoration study of the
Laurentian Library formed a critical basis for inventions in modern curtain
walls. Her recent work includes a series of published international projects
for revitalizing urban waterfronts.
Christopher Andrews works as
an architect and town planner in private practice in the San Francisco Bay
Area. He is focused on environmentally sustainable and culturally connected
design and building at all levels of scale, from furniture and textiles to the
layout of cities. His work has been published in the New York Times, Progressive
Architecture, Woodenboat Magazine, Nowtime, Competitions
Magazine, and the Los Angeles Times. He
grew up in New York City and has degrees in art, architecture, and urban design
from the Rhode Island School of Design and the University of California
Berkeley.
Shelley Brock is a licensed architect and LEED
Accredited Professional. She received her M.Arch. at Columbia University in New
York City in 1992, and a B.A. in French Literature and Art History at Sarah
Lawrence College. In New York, she worked for William McDonough Architects on
sustainable residential and institutional projects before relocating to Santa
Fe, New Mexico, where her architectural work developed an emphasis on the forms
and materials indigenous to the Southwest region, including adobe and straw
bale, as well as passive solar and permaculture principles. In Santa Fe,
Shelley also served as senior exhibit designer to the Museum of New Mexico.
Since 2000, in California, she has acted as managing architect for affordable
housing and residential projects, as well as master planner for larger sites.
She champions ecological sensitivity and community involvement in the design
process. In addition to teaching the Studio One course at USF, she has taught
design at the University of New Mexico and Columbia University. Her current
projects include a new Zen Center and Hotel in Berlin. As a devoted student of
Zen Buddhism, she strives to infuse her work with mindfulness and an abiding
sense of well-being.
Catherine Chang is a practicing professional and
instructor in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban
design. Through her firm Catherine Chang Design Studio and her role as an
educator, her attention is focused on the role of buildings and streetscape
design in supporting rich, active pedestrian environments. Recipient of several
design awards, she studied architecture and landscape architecture at UC
Berkeley. Prior to starting her own practice, she worked at Calthorpe
Associates and other notable urban design firms. She is currently an adjunct
faculty instructor at USF Architecture and Community Design and UC Berkeley
Extension Landscape Architecture Certificate programs.
Steven I. Doctors Ph.D is a licensed architect and general
contractor, and maintains a project management practice (The CM+ Group, LLC) in
the San Francisco Bay Area. He received a Bachelor of Architecture at Cornell
University and both a Master of Science and Ph.D. in Architecture from the
University of California (Berkeley). He has been teaching courses in
architectural history and professional practice in the Department of Art +
Architecture since 2007. His research interests include the history of
architectural practice, design theory and methods, project management
methodologies, project delivery strategies, early twentieth-century Italian
architecture, and sacred spaces. Steven is a member of the American Institute
of Architects, the AIA Practice Management Knowledge Community, the Society of
Architectural Historians, the American Society for the Advancement of Project
Management, and the International Project Management Association.
Thomas Dolan is an architect, urban designer, landscape designer and a live-work
pioneer, having built the first new construction live-work (1987), since the
1930’s. His firm, Thomas Dolan Architecture, has continued to design multi-unit
live-work (some as courtyard communities), market rate & affordable housing
and mixed use projects. His book, Live-Work Planning and Design: Zero
Commute Housing will be published in March 2012. At USF he has taught the
Fall 3 studio and is formulating an upper level seminar/studio in alternative
housing types, including cohort housing, cohousing, live-work, congregate
live-work, lifelong neighborhoods and naturally occurring retirement
communities.
John Klopf is a licensed architect and member of
the AIA with fifteen years in the field. He lives, along with his wife and
their two young sons, in San Francisco’s Mission District. He was born in
Cleveland Ohio, earned a Bachelor’s degree (cum laude) in East Asian Studies at
Harvard College, and received his Master of Architecture from the University of
California, Berkeley. He has also studied at Nanjing University in China. While
at Berkeley, he won a competitive travel fellowship for nine months of
independent architectural study in Japan and Europe. He focused his study on
light and materials in architectural space creation. He has taught architecture
classes at UC Berkeley and the University of San Francisco, and is now
practicing professionally in San Francisco with a focus on sustainability and
warm, contemporary residential design.
Mike Larkin attended the School of Architecture
at the University of Kansas and received his BArch degree in 1987. His
education included a year of study abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland and a summer
study program near Sienna, Italy. He moved to San Francisco in 1993 where
he worked with Heidi Richardson Architects for three years. Larkin returned to
academia from 1996 to 1999 to study affordable housing and urban design at the
University of California, Berkeley. He presently focuses on affordable urban
housing with the Studio 3 class at the University of San Francisco. Mike
Larkin started his own practice in 1999 and has been specializing in single
family and multi-family residential design in Bay Area cities.
Grace Lee has worked broadly as an architectural and urban designer in the Bay
Area for the past 15 years. As Vice President of Carrasco and Associates
Architects, a 10-person architecture and urban design firm based in Palo Alto,
CA., she manages urban design, mixed-use development and multi-family housing
projects. She is a member of the Palo Alto Architectural Review Board and a
LEED Accredited Professional. As a lecturer and studio instructor for the
past ten years, she has taught undergraduate and graduate design studios in the
Departments of Architecture at the University of San Francisco and UC Berkeley.
She received Masters degrees of Architecture and of City and Regional
Planning at the UC Berkeley and Bachelors degrees of Art History and
French Literature at Stanford University.
Paul Craig Okamoto has
committed his professional architectural career to designing buildings and
neighborhoods in ways that optimize environmental and social conditions. With
his San Francisco-based firm Okamoto Saijo Architecture, he designs affordable
housing developments, community centers, custom passive solar residences,
community-based neighborhood plans, all with an emphasis on sustainable design.
He received his Bachelor of Architecture from the California Polytechnic State
University, San Luis Obispo, CA, and his Master of Architecture from the
University of Adelaide, Australia. He is a 2001 Loeb Fellow at the Graduate
School of Design, Harvard University. He is a licensed California architect and
a LEED Accredited Professional. He also serves on the Urban Ecology Board of
Directors.
Matthew Peek studied architecture at U.C.
Berkeley, Columbia, and Yale, with a Fulbright at the University of Venice
titled “Community Architecture in the Communications Age.” His internationally
recognized theoretical and built work explores the interdependency of
community, technology, and ecology. A balance of construction projects,
competitions, and publishing form the basis for his practice, Studio Peek
Ancona, a research and design firm with projects ranging from interiors built
with the exclusive use of sustainable materials to civic buildings combining
innovative structure and natural facade systems.
Rafi Sarkis is a LEED accredited architect. A graduate of the Rhode Island
School of Design, he has practiced architecture in the San Francisco Bay area
for over fifteen years. His architecture firm integrates environmental
approaches and technological solutions into the design process. His multinational
background and early childhood exposure to archeology in the Middle East and
Europe have greatly influenced his contextual approach to architecture and
pedagogy. As adjunct faculty at USF teaches History of Architecture II, which
focuses on the rich and intricate interconnectedness between past built
environments and the cultures, technologies and physiography which produced
them. Through teaching he works to instill in the next generation of young
architects, a sense of responsibility and stewardship towards our increasingly
transnational and fragile environment.
Barbara Shands is a licensed
architect and received her Master of Architecture at UC Berkeley’s College of
Environmental Design after completing her Bachelor of Design at the University of
Florida. As an associate with SMWM for over seven years, she worked on
educational and commercial projects throughout the Bay Area. In 2006, she
established Shands Studio with an emphasis on site-specific contemporary design
that integrates light, structure and materials within the context of
sustainable practices for residential and small commercial/educational
projects. Her experience also includes volunteering with organizations
including Habitat for Humanity and Architecture for Humanity.
Biliana Stremska is a
visual artist and environmental designer. She has worked as a painter,
sculptor, interior designer and architectural designer. Currently she is
focused on public art projects--in the summer of 2008 she completed a 118 foot
long mural for Children's Fairyland in Oakland. In addition to the University
of San Francisco, she has taught architectural drawing at Diablo Valley College
in Pleasant Hill and at the University of California, Berkeley. Biliana
has a Master of Architecture degree from the University of California,
Berkeley, and a Bachelor of Science in Interior Design from University of
Bridgeport in Connecticut. She has also studied art and design in Poland
and in her homeland, Bulgaria.
Aaron Thornton completed his
undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee in 1994
and his graduate studies at the University of California Berkeley in
1998. He began teaching introductory courses in Architecture at UC Berkeley
and has continues to teach beginning architecture students at the University of
San Francisco. Aaron has practiced architecture since 1998 and has worked on
private houses, wineries, theaters, elementary schools, and community
colleges; currently working at Gould Evans Baum Thornley Architects in San
Francisco. He brings his attention to detail and professional rigor into the
basic training of the classroom.
Ethen Wood, a native San Franciscian, has more than fourteen years of experience in architecture. As principle of Ethen Wood Designs, Ethen takes what are often seen as negatives and turns them into positives. His work strives to unite beautiful natural materials with the artful and elegant expression of how they are put together. Prior to establishing Ethen Wood Designs, Ethen was responsible for design and project management for numerous local, regional, and national award-winning projects for Aidlin Darling Designs and Fougeron Architecture. He has received his Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon and his Master of Architecture degree from Harvard University's Graduate School of Design.
