An appreciation for architecture

“If you’re really aware of your surroundings,

you’ll notice design everywhere.”

Joseph Becker, SFMOMA

Joseph Becker claims to have unofficially invented the Tequila soda, his usual at his neighborhood watering hole, RockBar in Bernal Heights. It’s a simple drink (Fortaleza Blanco Tequila, preferably, and seltzer), yet it remained undiscovered until one day Becker, associate curator of architecture and design at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, craved an easy, off-the-menu thirst quencher.

The Los Angeles native’s keen eye for the obvious yet obscure is a valuable part of his curatorial skills, enabling him to recognize design in its humblest forms. To him, a driftwood beach shanty, with its raw and rudimentary framework, is just as interesting as the Salesforce Tower, a slick, pearlescent obelisk that will redefine San Francisco’s skyline. You could say that Becker’s perspective on design is rather, well, polyamorous.

“The aesthetic pursuit of architecture is what tends to come to mind when people think about architecture,” says Becker, who began as a curatorial assistant at SFMOMA in 2007. “But if you’re really aware of your surroundings, you’ll notice design everywhere.”

This level of appreciation precedes, by decades, Becker’s formal education in architecture at the California College of the Arts and his post as a designer at the awardwinning San Francisco design firm IwamotoScott. When Becker was a very impressionable 4 years old, his parents designed the family residence in Los Angeles, a “modern Craftsman” that they still call home.

“I was introduced to the idea of in-process architecture early on,” says Becker, 31. “Growing up, we always had a blueprint of the house framed in the den. It helped me understand that something could actually manifest from a drawing on a piece of paper.”

That’s the way most design quietly begins, “whether it’s good, bad, or ugly,” says Becker, who places as much cultural value in, say, the kitschy chapeau-shaped architecture that characterized the Brown Derby restaurant chain in Los Angeles as he does in the innovative Oru Kayak. The San Francisco-made, origamistyle foldable outrigger — recently acquired for the museum’s permanent design collection, which comprises everything from 1960s psychedelic rock posters to experimental furniture prototypes — is also an aspirational item on Becker’s packing list for an upcoming wilderness vacation, his first official getaway in more than a year.

Indeed, crafting compelling architecture and design programming that appeals both to the public and to scholars — a fine line that curators tread daily — occupies a lot of time, especially when you’re in Becker’s unique position: welcoming a fresh era at SFMOMA with the highly anticipated 2016 opening of its new digs, while preserving the legacy of the first architecture and design department established in a West Coast museum.

The architecture and design galleries at the new SFMOMA will open with an exhibition honoring the epic, glacier-like architecture of the new building and, in contrast, a smaller show of what Becker classifies as “micro-architecture” — chairs made of a single material. If you consider some of Becker’s other curatorial responsibilities — keeping tabs on such progressive design studios as Future Cities Lab in San Francisco or Oakland’s Envelope A+D and acquiring objects worthy of the permanent collection — it’s no wonder he hasn’t had many free moments to partake of his favorite activities: channeling the adventurer Bear Grylls in the Washington backcountry, dining on roast chicken at Zuni Cafe or honing his photography skills. (Look for his portrait of the Los Angeles indie-rock band the Peach Kings on their new album, “Lover’s Leap”.)

Still, you won’t find Becker punching the time clock at 5 p.m. — he considers himself one of the lucky few who make a living by doing what they love. As such, work is sometimes indistinguishable from life. “Curators have an immense responsibility to help shape the contemporary culture,” he says. “I take that very seriously — it’s the best part of my job.” We’ll raise a Tequila soda to that.