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David Baker Architects

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David Baker Architects: Sustainable architecture with a signature character and a social conscience

David Baker Architects (DBA) is a nationally recognized, locally oriented architecture and urban design firm with a focus on sustainable, mixed-use communities that support stability and connection. At the nexus of housing, climate, and community, DBA’s work seizes opportunities to enact meaningful change—forging strong partnerships to create livable density and resilient, human-centered places that uplift communities at all scales. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Birmingham, Alabama, DBA’s diverse, collaborative team is committed to designing and leading with expertise, curiosity, tenacity, pragmatism, and joy. We design thoughtful places that allow communities to thrive and that serve as a “multiplier of good”—that is, that enable and support engagement, connection, and other neighborhood benefits.

10/02/2026

We’re thrilled that DBA has been named the 2026 Planet Positive Firm of the Year by Metropolis Magazine! This award recognizes DBA’s continuously innovative work in supporting sustainable, mixed-use communities that build stability and connection.

DBA’s approach to sustainable and resilient design is informed by decades of expertise in urban design, interior architecture, innovative construction approaches, and sustainable design research. Our leadership—a team of eight principals—supports a culture of innovation and robust collaboration in order to address societal challenges through design and nurture a successful social impact business model.

Hunters View Phase III—the featured image in this post—exemplifies DBA’s commitment to connecting the needs, opportunities, and constraints of a site to social equity, and resident and community well-being. This final phase of the Hunters View brings 118 LEED Gold affordable family homes to the neighborhood (including three-, four-, and five-bedroom units designed to keep families together) and connects its indoor and outdoor resources to the larger development’s existing childcare center, Department of Public Health wellness center, and lending‑library kiosk. The completed buildings have set the stage for upcoming neighborhood-serving resources: A dynamic glass-walled space with expansive views of downtown is ready for a YMCA Learning Center, and a prominent parkside corner is prepared for a commercial teaching kitchen envisioned to allow local food businesses to produce and distribute their wares.

DBA designed Hunters View Phase III in close collaboration with Min Design Co (associate architect) and Fletcher Studio Landscape Architecture + Urban Design (landscape architect). Part of the City of San Francisco’s HOPE SF rebuilding program, the phased project was developed by The John Stewart Company and a range of development and service partners.

We appreciate that Metropolis magazine, through its editorial coverage, convenings, and recognition programs, is raising important questions about the built environment community and practices and elevating innovation that matters.

Read more about this recognition: https://metropolismag.com/planet-positive-awards/david-baker-architects/

09/28/2026

Another epic Peak2Peak hike in the books for the DBA team, with 10 peaks and 11 miles traversed in just under 6 hours. This year's DBA cohort included Principal Katie Ackerly and Associates Will Bloomer, Won Young Kim, and Jonny Rohrbaugh. Their journey through San Francisco’s southeast neighborhoods—from Portola to Visitacion Valley and Bayview to Hunters Point—highlighted San Francisco's off-the-beaten-path gems including hidden stairways, spectacular viewpoints, colorful public art, and at least five DBA buildings.

The fundraiser event supports Walk SF’s mission to make San Francisco’s streets safer and more walkable for everyone regardless of age or ability.

DBA team members have participated in Peak2Peak since Walk SF was founded in 2005, with Principal-at-Large David Baker and his partner Yosh Asato sponsoring for many years.

Thanks to Walk San Francisco for organizing, and to David and Yosh for being such incredible supporters of the event.

09/21/2026

Harmon Guest House is featured in BuildingGreen's climate justice issue—one of a handful of destinations recognized for designing in service of communities and of the land.

BuildingGreen Issue 03 takes up climate justice—the recognition that the communities most affected by a changing climate deserve a hand in shaping how we build in response. “Tread Lightly,’’ the feature by Joann Plockova, profiles destinations that are rooted in place, returning throughout to DBA’s Harmon Guest House as an example of hospitality built with a community rather than exclusively for visiting guests.

Principal Brett Randall Jones, AIA, describes our approach to community-based hospitality: “DBA has a philosophy that any building—office, chapel, housing or hotel—should respond to the people and place that it serves.”

Across the piece, images of our Healdsburg inn’s warm, regional materials set the tone—the reclaimed-redwood sun shading that gives the facade its texture, the reception desk milled from a local windfallen eucalyptus, tree-shaded walking paths connecting the building to the creek.

The hotel reflects the generosity of spirit central to DBA: a custom footbridge over Foss Creek links it to a newly created creekside park, its rooftop lounge is Healdsburg's first open to the public, and a county bus stop is built into its facade.

https://www.buildinggreen.com/feature/tread-lightly

Client: Piazza Hospitality
Architect and Interiors: David Baker Architects
Landscape Architect: Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture
Structural Engineer: KPFF
Lighting Designer: HLB lighting
MEP Engineer: Emerald City Engineers
Contractor: Midstate Construction
Civil Engineer: Summit Engineering
Art Consultant: Svea Lin Soll

First 📷: Angie Silvy; following 📷: Bruce Damonte Photography

09/17/2026

DBA Principal Amanda Loper was in Atlanta on Friday to celebrate the grand opening of Stone Hogan, a large-scale 100% affordable community on a 22-acre site in the city's Greenbriar corridor.

DBA had a key role in the initial visioning for the project and led the master planning and urban design for the neighborhood. Our aim was a people-oriented community, prioritizing green spaces, gracious circulation, wide promenades, and ample opportunities for pedestrian connections. Stone Hogan comprises two affordable communities: The Flats includes 256 apartments for working families, and the Villas offer 192 homes for seniors. A future parcel will add market-rate and mixed-income options, bringing a wide range of housing choices together on one site.

A neighborhood like this—development without displacement—only happens when organizations partner together. Our thanks to Atlanta Housing, the City of Atlanta Government, Invest Atlanta, and the nonprofit and community partners who helped make Stone Hogan a reality.

09/11/2026

When we began design visioning for 34th & San Pablo, a 60-home affordable housing community on Oakland's San Pablo Avenue corridor, we found that the site had its own soundtrack.

It shares a corner with the California Hotel, once home to the historic Zanzibar Club where legends Big Mama Thornton, B.B. King, Billie Holiday, and James Brown all graced the stage. Non-profit developer EBALDC preserved and renovated the hotel-turned-affordable housing more than a decade ago, and we’re working with them to round out the site with this new affordable building.

The inspiring musical heritage is reflected in building details. At the entry, an undulating wall reads both as a stage curtain caught mid-sweep and a waveform—amplitude and interval traced in concrete. DBA_Workshop cast the prototype in our Oakland fabrication shop, testing the profile before production. We worked with Joinery Structures in West Oakland to mill the custom wood profile, which Pacific Structuresbthen used to cast the finished concrete walls.

The address numbers took the same path in miniature: CNC-milled in MDF on our shop floor, then cast in concrete. The offset numerals add a bit of syncopation to the streetscape.

We're grateful to EBALDC, who shared this significant history with us, and to the neighbors who shaped the design at early community meetings.

34th & San Pablo is currently under construction by Cahill Contractors, set for completion September 2027.

California Hotel photo, circa 1935, courtesy Oakland Public Library, Oakland History Center

09/03/2026

New batch of mugs fresh from David Baker's home studio. 🍵

Our Principal-at-Large has always made thing by hand, and it extends well beyond drinkware. Many of our projects feature his one-off hand-fired tiles—no two are alike. And his Seed Bead Totem is now in residency at Harmon Guest House . Lately, all of our office kitchens are the lucky beneficiaries. Swipe for the lineup.

08/31/2026

Following wildfires that depleted Santa Rosa's housing, Felix responds with smart density, reimagining a surface parking lot one block from Old Courthouse Square with 168 homes and amenities tuned to modern living. This strategic pairing of design ambition and civic responsibility draws residents to reinvigorate the heart of the city.

The building doesn't present a single face, instead opening across three landscaped street frontages and a central paseo that threads between existing structures. Standing-seam steel at the corner volumes marks entry points and anchors the massing with material clarity. Offering a moment of transition from street to home, the lobby is reached through a wood-slat gate, past plantings and a glimpse into a double-height co-working space.
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The DBA-designed interiors reflect the agricultural character of the surrounding Sonoma landscape: custom redwood ceiling, hand-built seed-inspired sculpture, and earthy palettes drawn from the region's fertile terrain. Twenty-two unique unit layouts invite renters to find the right fit. Amenities—a wellness center with sauna and steam, a roof lounge with hill views, co-working spaces—reflect a post-pandemic attentiveness to how residents actually live and work.�

The all-electric LEED Gold mid-rise includes heat-pump hot water, rooftop solar, and bioretention rain gardens and native plantings that treat 100% of stormwater.

Felix was honored with a 2026 Gold Nugget Merit Award for Best Multi-Family Housing Community (100+ DUA) ✨. Thanks and congratulations to our developer partners Related California and Zach Berkowitz; teammates Carlile Macy and KPFF ; and the Pacific Coast Builders Conference.

📷: Steven J Magner

PCBC - The Art, Science & Business of Housing

08/28/2026

DBA's Birmingham-based team made the trip to Nashville yesterday to celebrate the grand opening of Park24, an affordable housing community and community resource developed in collaboration with the Urban League of Middle Tennessee for Holladay Ventures.

The community includes an Empowerment Center, operated on site by ULMT, offering workforce development, education, and enrichment for residents and neighbors, plus space for retail. Its spot on the Dickerson Pike transit corridor means residents can reach downtown jobs and the new East Bank car-free.

Park24 represents DBA’s deep affordable housing expertise thoughtfully translated through a southern lens with vernacular design, regional construction methods, and local materials.

Landscape by Hawkins Partners
Mural by Christian Green of C3 Art; Painting by Ja Carlos Tatu / Woke 3

08/21/2026

Page Street Studios has won the Gold Nugget Honor Award for Best Affordable Housing Community (over 60 DUA)! ✨

This compact, carefully crafted building consolidates three small lots to deliver high-density housing—81 studios for low-income households, including 27 reserved for chronically homeless residents. Tuck-under mechanized parking freed the building from a conventional podium, allowing daylit corridors, balconies, and a sequence of shared roof decks to animate the upper floors. A cascading wood trellis, open-air stair tower, graphic checkerboard facade, and custom front door lend a dynamic material street presence.

Part of San Jose’s evolving West San Carlos Urban Village, the project’s most civic gesture is the south paseo—a landscaped greenway that anticipates a larger planned pedestrian network. The common room opens directly onto the planted paseo, which functions as the building’s courtyard. Certified GreenPoint Platinum, Page Street Studios demonstrates that constrained sites, tight budgets, and high density are not obstacles to architecture that is generous, lasting, and genuinely connected to its community.

Thanks to Charities Housing for selecting DBA to envision and realize this project, to our landscape partner form/work Landscape Architecture, and to the Pacific Coast Builders Conference for the recognition.

PCBC - The Art, Science & Business of Housing
Lead 📷: Vantage Point Photography ; following 📷: Bruce Damonte Photography

08/11/2026

Join our talented and fun team! We're looking for creative, committed folks to fill two roles at DBA:

• An SF Bay Area-based Architectural Designer to support projects in their earliest phases—site planning; concept design; and the renderings, models, and graphics that help us realize and express our vision.

• An experienced Architectural Project Manager to work in our Birmingham, Alabama, office to design and manage multifamily projects from concept through construction, working closely with clients and our larger team in a collaborative design process.

https://davidbakerarchitects.teamtailor.com/jobs

Address

San Fransisco, CA
94107

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 6pm
Tuesday	9am - 6pm
Wednesday	9am - 6pm
Thursday	9am - 6pm
Friday	9am - 6pm

Telephone

+14158966700

Website

http://www.dbarchitect.com/

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