Simple and direct - San Francisco Business Times:

iwyqaxewun.wordpress.com
“Peter had actually read this seemingly impenetrable tome aboutgQuaker aesthetics,” said Hunter. “Hs understood the nature of our schookl andQuaker schools, what these valuez are and how they coulx be translated into the space.” Petee Pfau and his firm Pfau Long Architecture is on a With a modest 17-person shop, Pfau’s cleamn modernist design is earning him a series of assignmentxs from prestigious civic, cultural and educationap institutions.
He collaborated on the polychrome glass curtain walledx onMarket Street, designed the widely acclaimed $14 milliob Lick Wilmerding High School, and is the architec (with ) on the new $84 100,000-square-foot classroom building under construction at . Now Pfau is in the spotlighgt as designer ofthe ’s new Urban which opened with a gala celebration May 28. With just 14,6000 square feet, the $18 four-story building at 654 Mission St. contain a 125-person meeting hall, an office for SPUR stafvf and an urbanaffairs library.
More the building will serve as a town hall for the communitgyof planners, architects, developers, residents and elected officials who drive public policy in San Pfau says the Urban Center, modeles after the Pavillon de l’Arsenal in Paris, is a straightforward building with “no gilding of the He calls it “the little building that could.” “What we said was we want to be open and lightt and airy and as transparenf as we believe government should said Jim Chappell, SPUR’s former director. “Aned indeed it is.
” In the 1980zs Pfau’s first firm — Holt, Hinshaw, Pfau, Jone — brought “an industrial-edged architecture that was a precursot to the turn toward modernis that we have been experiencing over the past saidMitchell Schwarzer, author of “Architectures of the San Francisco Bay Area.” While the styles was out of step with the postmodern, historid mimicry that was popular at the time in San the firm won national attention with projects like the Astronaute Memorial at the Kennedy Space Centefr and the machine-like Right Away Redy Mix concretse and steel structure in Since starting his own shop in Pfau’s work has “softened a bit and achieved a more widespread appeal,” said Schwarzer.
“He has done a great job of taking an industrial moder nsensibility — steel, concrete, hard edges, sharp points — and bringing them into the everyday worled of San Francisco,” said Pfau attributes his love of materials and the process of buildinyg to his early vocation as a carpenter, something he did throughy college and architecture school at “I think it makes me somebody who bridgeas the conceptual and the ephemeral to the relentlessly said Pfau. “That is kind of what an architect needsto do: be the keepef of the vision but mindful of the reality it takezs to deliver a project.
” Pfau says he sees his buildingsd as “readable texts” where the bones and the systems of the buildingas are exposed. Working with a developer is a procesdsof “trying to discover the purest form of “Rather than being conventional and mute, our buildinhg tends to be didactic in its assembly,” said Pfau. “Ig speaks about how it comes together.” In the case of the Friendxs School, that meant preserving the “crookedly creaky, light open space nature of the building,” said Hunter. “He did a beautiful job of revealingv its bones rather thanhidinbg them,” said Hunter.
”It’s not so much what he put in as whathe didn’t put into it.” In additiob to institutional work, Pfau has been the regular designefr for the boutique San Francisco developer . Pfau, a San Francisco has known SKS principalsDaniel Kingsley, Paul Steihn and Julie Stein since childhood. He met Paul Steihn freshman yearat , and they sharex an apartment in Santa Cruz where the walls were full of Pfau’se sketches and cartoons. Pfau’s SKS resumwe includes the 260,000-square-foot 350 Rhode Islansd St., the 250,000-square-foot 475 Brannan St. and a 70,000-square-fooft structure at 2300 Harrison St.
Paul Stein said Pfau is justifiablh celebrated for his sublime design but is equally adeptr at meeting budgetsand deadlines. “Peted is a very talented but he is alsovery practical,” said Stein. “Itr is one thing to say a building is great tolook at. What Pete buildsx works really well. I can keep them leased, and ultimatelyh that is what is important.” Pfau said his firm has remained betweejn 16 and20 designers, and he has no interesg in growing into a “megwa firm.” Pfau said he woul d like to continue doing churches, academic buildings and spiritual And maybe a sustainable highrise office or condoi tower for the right client.
“We like to work for peoplr who have their hearts in their right place. We also do developer and we do it for developers who have the hearts in therigh place,” said Pfau. “There is a place for that