Feldman Architecture

Feldman Architecture is an award-winning residential and commercial design practice recognized for creating warm, light-filled spaces that are site-sensitive and carefully detailed. Highly collaborative in nature, the firm approaches design as a dialogue between client, design team and site. Each project is an opportunity to create an innovative solution that is relevant to the project environs and tailored to a clients' specific needs.

The studio's culture is also informal and non-hierarchical; members of the small firm work with clients in an engaging, shared process to find smart and sustainable solutions. Closely guiding projects from design through construction, designers and project managers are deeply involved in research and probing the parameters of a project. Strong alliances with consultants, builders and artisans contribute to carefully informed design decisions and result in fully realized projects with conceptual clarity and precise detailing.

Commitments
Feldman Architecture is dedicated to creating buildings that sit gracefully and lightly on the earth: beautiful, healthful, and soulful spaces that enhance our clients’ lives, our communities, and the environment. We strive, in our designs, to pair boldness with simplicity. We work in conversation with clients and colleagues: listening without preconception, sharing visions and values, generating ideas and sifting possibilities together, finding a clear and compelling focus. This collaborative process helps us devise solutions that are responsive to program and context, sustainable, and elegant.

We take seriously our obligations and opportunities as architects to respect, and even restore, the natural environment. Drawing upon past wisdoms as well as contemporary building science, we aspire to create structures that conserve resources and that move architecture to ecologically and ethically responsible designs. We believe in the importance of great design because we understand that the quality of architecture shapes the quality of life and that what we create can be meaningful for many generations.

Biography
Jonathan Feldman
Jonathan Feldman, AIA, LEED AP, is Feldman Architecture’s founding partner and director of design. Since establishing the firm in 2003 in the basement of his San Francisco Victorian, he has watched Feldman Architecture grow into a residential and commercial design practice recognized for creating warm, light-filled spaces with an understated modern aesthetic. Jonathan is passionate about design that solves complex problems and committed to creating solutions that significantly improve the way we live and interact with our small planet. His work reflects an understanding of the clear connection between a building and its surrounding environment and has earned accolades from local, national, and international awards committees and recognition from numerous books and periodicals. Jonathan earned a liberal arts degree from Amherst College, where he majored in Astronomy and English, then both explored a career in filmmaking and worked as a carpenter prior to pursuing architecture. He received his Masters of Architecture from the University of Oregon, where he took advantage of the program’s strong focus on sustainable design (as well as the Northwest’s spectacular mountains and back-country).

Steven Stept
Steven Stept, AIA, Principal, joined Feldman Architecture in 2013 bringing over 25 years of architectural experience with an expertise in residential architecture. Steven earned a Bachelor of Architecture Degree from The Pennsylvania State University prior to moving to the West Coast where he quickly embraced the ideals of California modernism. For over 25 years, he tenured with the office of Swatt Architects (later Swatt | Miers Architects) where Steven acted as Managing Principal for almost 20 years. Steven is a member of the American Institute of Architects, licensed in California, and a leader in the local architectural community. He is past Chair of the East Bay AIA Events Committee where he focused his efforts on creating programs to showcase local architectural design, international development and awareness of architecture within the community; and was a founder and Chair of the 2011 and 2012 Home Tours, East Bay Living.

Taisuke Ikegami
Tai has been an integral member of the Feldman team since 2005 and brings over a decade of experience on wide range of projects to his role as one of the firm’s four partners. A licensed architect in the state of California, Tai received a Master of Architecture degree from Tulane University in New Orleans and got his professional start in the commercial sector. Since then, he has accrued extensive experience in a wide variety of project types including single-family and multi-family homes, educational projects and restaurant jobs. What Tai appreciates most about focusing on custom residential design is the opportunity to pursue close collaboration with clients and builders in all project phases. He consistently establishes and maintains rewarding client relationships based on clear and continued collaboration.

Chris Kurrle
Chris joined Feldman Architecture in 2011, bringing 20 years of design and construction experience with single family custom homes along with him. His wide-ranging design and planning background also includes wineries, boutique hotels, and master plans for urban development projects in the Bay Area and beyond. In 1997, after finishing degrees in Building Sciences and Architecture at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, Chris visited a friend in San Francisco only to return for good one month later with two suitcases and enough money to last him a month. Familiar with the expression, “It runs in the family”, Chris is proud to say that he is number five out of nine architects in his family.