Knowles Architect, Inc. Information

Knowles Architect, Inc. is a full service architecture firm focused on the highly personalized and place-based design of residences, restaurants, and other facilities which celebrate their connection to the natural world and long-term land stewardship. Any building, landscape, or object we create needs to be better than the things we must destroy in order to create it. The bare minimum for any architectural act should be that it makes a place better for having been built. Truly great architecture goes a step further. It finds the heart of a place and celebrates it. What do we mean by “place”? Its not just the building site (which is of course very important), but also the neighborhood that it sits in and the land community it will inhabit. Every place sits in a land community which includes the people, plants, and animals which inhabit it. In an urban landscape this community is made up mostly of people, but there are coyotes roaming the streets of San Francisco and every city is inherently tied to the land from which is draws its resources. On a rural site the plants and animals may be the most obvious members of that community, but at the very least it also includes you, the owner who plans to make a life there. Whatever site (be it rural, urban, or something in between) and whatever the program (be it a home, a restaurant, or something else entirely) we take particular care to get to know you, and your place, and how you might inhabit and improve upon that place in the world.