San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Designer Profile
Communication and collaboration guide architect Nick Lee’s designs.
A simple philosophy guides Alamedabased architect Nick Lee: Communication and collaboration are paramount, especially when it comes to designing and building multimillion dollar custom homes across Northern California.
“I’m always attentive to what the clients want, but I’m mindful that they may not be able to verbalize exactly what that is. It would be like me trying to write a column about wine. I know what I like, but I don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to get my point across,” said Lee, a graduate of the University of Oregon’s architectural program and principal of an eponymously named firm since 2015. “So it’s important to read between the lines of what someone is trying to tell you.”
Prior to starting his own enterprise, Lee worked for a number of prestigious architectural firms, including San Francisco’s Sutton Suzuki Architects and Sausalito’s Backen & Gillam.
Nick Lee Architecture is fullservice firm that oversees every aspect of the design and development. From site planning, to permitting, to overseeing construction, Nick Lee Architecture has established a sterling reputation for fine design, especially in Wine Country.
In this interview with The Chronicle, Lee talks about how he gravitated toward architecture, the technology he can’t live without and how he once designed light fixtures fashioned from old traffic signals. Q: What’s something about you people might not know? A: I love music, and I play the trombone. Also, around 2007, I and another architect, Daniel Krivens, designed light fixtures fashioned from old city traffic lights. San Francisco was changing its traffic lights to LED and were tossing the old ones. Krivens grabbed a bunch and we started brainstorming. We sold the lights under the company name “Greenlight Concepts,” which is no longer around, but I imagine you can still find those lights somewhere online.
Q: What’s your background? Where have you worked?
A: After college, I started out with a firm in San Francisco that designed mostly churches and public safety buildings, like police departments and fire stations. I did that for two years before going to a Sausalito firm, Backen & Gillam. They did hospitality and were my first experience designing residential architecture. I was there for a little less than year before moving to Sutton Suzuki Architects. My time there was really designoriented around homes in Belvedere, Tiburon and Marin.
It was a dream job, but ultimately, I was at a point where I was looking at getting the handson experience of building a house, so I left Sutton Suzuki and went to work with a gentleman to build a house in Mill Valley. I had nothing to do with its planning or design. I was there to frame walls, dig holes and learn whatever I could because what you learn in the field can be different from what you learn in school and in an office. And most recently, before starting Nick Lee Architecture, I worked for Houseplans.com, where we were on a mission to bring better home design to more people.
Q: What’s a piece of technology that you can’t imagine doing business without?
A: I’d say it’s software that allows for instant collaboration and feedback. So file sharing services like Dropbox and Google meeting's screen share function are hugely helpful. These tools allow us to be in the same digital space as our design team, or our client, or the interior designer or the builder.
Q: Is your architect brain al