Reframing Housing: Design, Value, and the Built Environment

Reframing Housing: Design, Value, and the Built Environment is a conversation about the role of architecture in shaping the future of housing in the Bay Area. Hosted by Design Bay Area at Sidell Pakravan Architects, the evening brings together Kristen Sidell(moderator), Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, Liz Einwiller and Sarah Kuehl, and Rudabeh Pakravan for a discussion that challenges some of the prevailing assumptions shaping housing today.As the pressure to build more housing intensifies, design is often framed as a luxury that adds cost, slows delivery, and distracts from goals like affordability or density. This panel argues the opposite: that thoughtful, well-executed design is essential to making housing more livable at the scale of the home and more impactful at the scale of the city. Through a series of short presentations and discussion, each architect will share recent work and reflect on how design can operate within real constraints like budget, regulation, and density to produce housing that is both efficient and meaningful.

Studio and Panel Bio:

Sidell Pakravan is an award-winning architecture practice based in Berkeley. They believe in the power of architecture to influence context, culture, community and individual experience. Sidell Pakravan approaches architectural design as both a physical exploration of space, form, scale, and volume, as well as a vital practice of civic and social engagement. Their critically informed, idea-driven designs physically materialize as distinctive, bold, and contextually resonant constructions. The firm has been named one of the top 50 architecture firms in North America by AN Interior Magazine in 2025 and has been recognized as a Design Vanguard by Architectural Record. Their housing design for the National Single Stair Competition was recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott are principals of the award-winning and internationally recognized Iwamoto Scott. They recently won an Architecture Master Prize for their design of a multi-family building in Santa Monica.Liz Einwiller and Sarah Kuehl are the founders of Einwiller Kuehl, an award winning landscape architecture firm based in Oakland. They are currently working on the urban design and landscape for new housing at the North Berkeley BART station.

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