Design & Eating - Panel Event & After- Party (SF)

Executive Editor at California Home + Design

 An experienced interiors and architecture writer and esteemed member of the statewide design community, Erin Feher straddles the unlikely worlds of architectural history and cutting-edge contemporary design. During the four years that she was deeply engaged in historical research for her book, Great Homes of San Francisco: 1875–1945 (Acanthus Press, October 2012), she was simultaneously working her way up in the magazine world, where she now holds the title of executive editor at California Home+Design. Her unprecedented advancement from intern to, at the age of 31, creative and editorial head of California Home+Design, can be credited to her desire to implement fresh ideas, embrace new technologies and solidify California's place in the international design and architecture scene. At the same time, she is committed to celebrating the rich design history of the state. She is often asked to speak on both topics, and has led a number of thought-provoking panels, lively designer interviews and community celebrations.

Partner and Chief Creative Officer of the Puccini Group

With a diploma in architecture from Catholic University of America of Architecture, Robert Polacek, heads up the concept development and design side of the Puccini Group. He has helped the firm create countless sophisticated, chef-tailored, noteworthy restaurants across the globe for clients such as Jumeirah, Kimpton, Fairmont and Four Seasons among others. His success stems not only from his passion for the industry, but also his knowledge of the business side of restaurants, allowing the group’s market driven concepts to not only look great, but function well on every level.

When we asked Roby to imagine his dream project he spoke of a place that draws people for the pleasure it offers but also teaches them about the environment around it. “If it were in a desert, they’d learn about dry lands; if it were in a city, they might learn how the urban grid tells the story of place.” One of Roby’s hero’s is the humanistic Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier. Roby brings a lot of heart to design: He feels that it often takes only a small effort to move the ordinary into the realm of the extraordinary. “A well designed bus station or beautifully-made lighting fixture can make all the difference.”

Principal and Founder of envelope Architecture + Design

A practicing architect for over twenty years, Mr. Burnham’s work encompasses residential, educational, commercial, civic, and hospitality building and renovation projects as well as the design of exhibitions, products, and furniture. Recent projects of note includes proxy, a temporary two-block construct occupying vacant lots in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley and composed of locally-based pop-up stores. Conceived of as a “content machine,” proxy is an investigation into the potentials of impermanence while it seeks to re-establish the urban fabric through a combination of frame, fabric, mesh, wall and volume. His hospitality projects include numerous celebrated Bay Area restaurants such as Delfina, Delfina’s Pizzeria’s, Locanda, Contigo Restaurant, Commis in Oakland, and Domaine Chandon in Napa Valley.

Mr. Burnham is a graduate of Cornell University’s School of Architecture, where he received the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Prize, awarded to one student in the graduating class for outstanding final thesis work. Before establishing his own firm in 1998, he worked for six years with the Interim Office of Architecture (IOOA) in San Francisco. Mr. Burnham is frequently invited to give lectures on his work to professional and academic audiences in the United States and Europe.  

An award winning architecture and design firm, envelope a+d is known for its innovative built work and forward-looking projects. In 2009 the firm received the New Practices award from the San Francisco AIA, which recognized envelope a+d as one of seven emerging Bay Area architecture firms.