The state-of-the-art facility is entirely solar powered and includes a small theatre, exhibit areas, and a new bookstore. The new visitor center will both compliment the natural environment and achieve LEED Gold certification.

For more information regarding the Grand Opening Celebration please visit the USDA Forest Service News and Events webpage

WebUrbanist in as online independent online publishing group that aims to educate and fascinate, providing unique original content. The group covers the collective life of our times through the lens of creative visual culture in the beating hearts of our cities.

What a screenwriter is to a great movie, an architect is to an impressive structure. Without one, you can’t have the other.

For Shah Kawasaki Architects in Oakland, the parking canopies at Oakland International Airport, the renovations at Studio One Art Center and the ground-up design of Fire stations Number 8 and 18 in Oakland are all examples of projects that came out of the minds of the firms founders.

But sometimes when it comes to public perception, the architect’s contribution is forgotten, said Harish Shah, co-founder of Shah Kawasaki.

“The biggest misconception about architects is that we don’t do a lot, because the buildings only appear in reality when contractors start construction,” Shah said. “But because we provide the road maps to make the buildings possible, I think we are the most important part of the process.”

Because architects’ value is not always realized, the profits they make aren’t substantial, Shah and co-founder Alan Kawasaki said.

As a result, despite bringing in about $2.4 million in revenues in 2009, the profit margins are small.

“If we walk away from a project with a 7 to 9 percent profit, we’ll be lucky,” Shah said. “Compared to the contractors, we don’t make a lot of money.”

But for Shah and Kawasaki, money has never been the duo’s driving force.

Eleven years ago the two left a larger firm, RMW Architecture in San Francisco, with the goal to work in a personal environment, being your own boss trumps big paychecks, the said.

“We are much more passionate about the value we provide to society by what we do as an architect than we are interested in making money,” Shah said.

Shah’s wife, Jyoti, 63, and his son, Manan, 34, are also partners of the firm. Shah, 64, and Kawasaki, 56, set the firm up so that neither is more powerful than the other. There are no evaluations, and everybody makes the same amount of money.

Instead, they each have their specialties that they market primarily to city planners. Shah loves working on community centers and museums, while Kawasaki finds his passion in designing firehouses.

“I personally love that firehouses are very small yet very intense,” Kawasaki said. “The challenges of making them efficient as possible in a limited amount of space is a challenge I really like.”

Overall, the industry has become much more competitive, said Sidney Sweeney, executive director of the American Institute of Architects East Bay Chapter. Where in the past, a project might see 10 firms bidding on a project, today there might be 50, she said.

Also there’s no consistent pattern on the type of firms that have survived the downturn in the economy.

“Honestly, it’s that magic mix of having the right clients, strong architects, a strong practice and plain old luck of being at the right place at the right time,” she said. “Unfortunately we have had some great firms that did fantastic architecture, but they had to close their doors because their clients couldn’t get the money to hire them.”

Shah Kawasaki has used a combination of word of mouth and self-generated marketing to keep the firm going. One reason the firm has survived the economic downturn is that about 90 percent of the company’s projects are targeted at the public sectors, Kawasaki said.

The members of the firm also spend a lot of time trying to get to know each client on a personal level. If there’s a community hearing on a potential project, one of them attends.

More than just the aesthetics of the building, the safety and efficiency of the building sometimes take the vast majority of the design time. Those who think architects just draw up designs don’t understand how involved they are involved in the entire process, Kawasaki said.

“We try to understand what our clients do and listen to what their dreams are,” Kawasaki said. “We aren’t just building buildings, we are building communities.”

Contact David Morrill, Contra Costa Times, at 925-977-8534.

Shah Kawasaki Architects’ specialty is public sector projects. Here’s a small sample of some of its work:
- Studio One Art Center, Oakland
- Fire station Number 8 and Number 18, Oakland
- Public Works Building Expansion, Martinez
- Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco
- San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose
- Sheriff’s Regional Training Center, Dublin
- Sobering Station, San Leandro
- LeConte Hall Computer Center, Berkeley
- Highland Hospital

Here’s a picture of us all packed up and ready to move!

Recently, the community of East Oakland and the Oakland Fire Department, along with City Councilwoman Jean Quan, gathered for a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the opening of the new Fire Station 18. The ceremony was attended by the crew of Fire Station 18, members of the local community, SKA and Swinerton.

Located at a highly visible, busy thoroughfare in Central East Oakland, Fire Station 18 provides an important new landmark for this mixed-use working class neighborhood. As the first LEED certified fire station in Oakland, Fire Station 18 also represents a major sustainability milestone for the city.

The original Fire Station 18, built in 1924, was replaced on the existing site to meet OSHA and ADA requirements and accommodate modern emergency response apparatus. The new station, designed to accommodate three shifts of up to eight fire fighters and two ride-along students, two trucks and one ladder truck, resides on the border of and serves a broad constituency in Council Districts 4, 5 and 6. Anticipating LEED Gold Certification, the facility features three drive-thru apparatus bays, nine hotel-style rooms for fire fighters including two captain’s bedrooms, spacious secure parking, an interior courtyard, and large public community room — all located on a 10,000 square foot tight urban site. The new two-story building is founded on grade beams and spread footings with moment-frames, shear walls, open-web trusses and glue-lams, and features a structural steel tower section supporting an exterior flagpole towering the building at a height of approximately 60 feet.

With the replacement of Station 18, the Oakland Fire Department strives to create a new community icon for this East Oakland neighborhood, originally established as the village of Melrose before being annexed to the City of Oakland in 1909. The neighborhood experienced substantial growth with the influx of factory workers in the 1920s. While the architecture of the community reflects these industrial roots, the main thoroughfare’s history is rooted in its past as a commercial district with a pedestrian presence and inviting buildings accented by store canopies. The site is also in close proximity to the Melrose Branch Library, a Carnegie-designed building of distinction; multiple schools and the EGYPT Theater.

The architectural design goals for the new station were to create a new architectural community anchor and provide an accessible and welcoming street presence for surrounding residents and station visitors. In addition, the building is designed and fabricated to meet the City of Oakland’s Green Building Ordinance and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Gold Certification building requirements. A new public art project created for this important station house contributes to the identification of this model municipal facility as a community beacon, drawing the disparate residential and commercial architectural styles of the community together.

“We are a community based fire service and our new state-of-the-art, LEED Gold energy efficient Fire Station 18 is the anchor of Oakland’s Melrose community. In addition to receiving high quality emergency response services, the public will have the opportunity to receive mentoring and training, and attend neighborhood meetings in the community room located at the fire station.”
- Fire Chief Gerald A. Simon

To support the Oakland Fire Department in achieving their goal to create a new community landmark in East Oakland, SKA worked with the users to deliver an operationally efficient and livable fire station design. The innovative fire station design responds to the restrictions of a tight urban site by providing drive-through bays for apparatus’ that allow firefighters to enter and exit the station without having to stop traffic. In addition, Fire Station 18 is the first city of Oakland fire station to provide “hotel-style” accommodations for fire fighters that allow the fire department to staff with sensitivity to gender. Hotel-style accommodations provide single rooms with a private bath instead of traditional locker-room style dormitories with shared bathrooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide the department the flexibility to staff the station without compromising staff privacy.
Fire Station 18 serves as a model for the city of Oakland’s future fire stations and incorporates many innovative sustainable features:

• A solar hot water system that has the capacity to provide 100% of the building’s hot water needs with adequate sun levels.
• Radiant heating that uses less energy than forced air heating systems and provides a higher level of user comfort.
• Natural ventilation systems provide all cooling needs for the fire station.
• Sustainable building and finish materials such as denim insulation, linoleum, FSC© certified wood products, and cool roofing materials.
• A Construction Waste Management Plan which will divert 75% of waste from landfill.
• Water efficient landscaping and water use reduction via low-flow toilets and showers.
• Site elements including site selection, development density, Brownfield Redevelopment, public trans­portation access, bicycle storage and changing rooms, and storm water management for a green roof.

SKA partnered with the contractor, Swinerton, to deliver Fire Station 18 under budget and ahead of schedule using the “CM-@-risk” project delivery method. Working closely together, we were able to proactively manage costs and provide streamlined design services to the Oakland Fire Department that helped to keep costs down.

About Shah Kawasaki Architects: Shah Kawasaki Architects offers a full range of architectural, planning and interior design services. The firm specializes in the design of public and commercial facilities that are welcoming, memorable and function efficiently. These include administrative offices, community centers, public safety facilities, and higher education and healthcare facilities. The firm is a leader in sustainable design and the majority of its employees are LEED Accredited Design Professionals. With 16 employees, Shah Kawasaki Architects provides award-winning design from its office in Oakland’s historic Jack London Square.

About Swinerton: The Swinerton Family of Companies provides commercial construction and construction management services throughout the Western United States and is a 100% employee-owned company. Established in 1888, Swinerton formally incorporated in the State of California in 1908 and holds California Contractor License No. 92. To date Swinerton has completed approximately 75 LEED projects totaling over $1.7 billion and covering more than 10.5 million square feet, and has over 325 LEED APs on staff — over 25% of its workforce.

More about the Schulman Grove Visitor Center and Ancient Bristlecone Forest here: http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo/about/

The team, led by Clark, includes SmithGroup as the lead architect and Ratcliff and SKA as associate architects. The $430.8 Million contract includes construction of replacement facilities that will be completed in three phases over seven years, making it the largest healthcare investment in the history of Alameda County.

For more on the Highland Hospital project: http://www.clarkconstruction.com/releases/entry/5755/

The program includes a pass-through bay that can accommodate three apparatus, living quarters for four personnel, and an exercise room.

More information on the Topaz Museum can be found here: http://www.topazmuseum.org/

SKA created a bold facade that stands out along the busy thoroughfare. The facade’s vibrant colors, bright signage and visible overhangs now draw in new customers who increased this location’s sales by 53% within the first four weeks of the store’s grand reopening.

The article can be viewed at http://archrecord.construction.com/projects/portfolio/archives/0710samfox-1.asp and in print in October’s Architectural Record.