BAR Architects is a Green business certified, sustainable architecture and design practice based in the San Francisco Bay Area. They have been awarded more than 180 awards and publishing. In the year 2000, AIA California regarded them with the title, “Council Firm of the Year”. The firm was established in 1966 by Backen, Arrigoni, and Ross (BAR), who have been planning and creating horizons of several urban areas, broadly and universally. They have actively been creating custom residential ventures, entertainment, retail, educational organization structures, hotels, clubhouses, and wineries all mirroring their wide scope of interests. BAR believes in planning solid, durable, influential, and profitable structures that improve the quality of life while lessening the contrary ecological effects. Their objective is to make spaces that are inspiring and that stand the trial of time while meeting every one of their Client’s particular needs in unique ways.
1. Burwell Residence | BAR Architects
Location: Sonoma County, California
Building Usage: Private Residence
Client: Bieke Burwell
Status: Completed in 1996
The cohesive design of Burwell residence, from indoor to outdoor spaces creates seamless continuity giving the space a sense of harmony acquiring plentiful greenery. The residence is planned by connecting a progression of pavilions that appear to be woven into the hills as they blend into the slope of Healdsburg. The residence’s main living space and patio sit at the crossing point of critical vistas; one toward the southeast of the fields and vineyards, and the other toward the southwest, up a native valley. The main house and guesthouse are associated through a progression of patios and terraces that give private gardens and distant views of the valley.
Image Sources:
- Burwell Residence © richard-beard.com
- Burwell Residence © richard-beard.com
- Burwell Residence © dwell.com
- Burwell Residence © dwell.com
- Burwell Residence © richard-beard.com
2. City Center Bishop Ranch
Location: San Ramon, California
Building Usage: Commercial and Retail
Client: Sunset Development Co.
Status: Completed in 2018
City Center Bishop Ranch, a LEED Platinum-certified venture, aimed to cross flawlessly with cultivating vitality in the San Ramon community by giving a significant urban resource and communal space with retail, dining, and recreational opportunities. Renzo Piano Structure Workshop and BAR Architects together planned two C-shaped, 3-story structures that are connected by an outside terrace with a transparent floor-to-ceiling ground level facade that acts as an urban lobby and creates a dialogue between the building and the public. The corrugated, textured, stainless steel cladding is aesthetical, and changes appearance as the light differs through the span of the day and seasons, giving the building a unique character. The center has various entry points and promotes pedestrian circulation which aids in making the construction highly efficient.
indication of widening interest in the retail, dining and entertainment
complex that has effectively become San Ramon’s new downtown.
Vantage Point Photography
Center complex in the Bishop Ranch Business Park, in a conceptual image.
The upscale City Center complex in San Ramon’s Bishop Ranch business park
has added several tenants, including an Equinox fitness center, the
developer said Wednesday. Besides the new Equinox, Fieldwork Brewing
Company, Roam Artisan Burgers, Williams Sonoma and West Elm are planning
outlets at the San Ramon complex. THE LOT, a cinema and entertainment
center, will also be part of the development.
Sunset Development
3. UC Davis Student Community Center | BAR Architects
Location: Davis, California
Building Usage: Educational and Institutional
Client: University of California, Davis
Status: Completed in 2012
Awards: Livable Buildings Award, Center for the Built Environment, 2015, Merit Award, Design-Build Institute of America (Western Pacific Region), 2012
BAR with the aid of UC Davis’ designer, staff, and students decided the sustainability measures for the project, including permeable walkways, photovoltaic-ready infrastructure, and reuse building materials. The community center located at a significant intersection is structured as a two-story building composed around a double-height lobby, study lounge, and community gathering space. The three primary student associations are situated on the first floor, each having prominent outside corner windows that connect with the passers-by and bring the street visually into the building. The center comprises conference and meeting rooms, study lounge, regulatory spaces, cafe, reflection room, and labs, and classrooms.
4. Pottery Barn
Location: San Francisco, Newport Beach, Palo Alto, Corte Madera, Burlingame, New York, Houston, Chicago, Phoenix
Building Usage: Commercial and Retail
Client: Williams-Sonoma Inc.
Awards: Pottery Barn, Burlingame – Gold Nugget Merit Award, PCBC, (1996), Pottery Barn, Burlingame – Nugget Merit Award, PCBC, (1996), Pottery Barn, SoHo, New York – Honorable Mention, VM&SD/Institute of Store Planners, (1996), Pottery Barn, San Francisco – Gold Nugget Merit Award, PCBC (1995)
BAR Architects’ plans of nine Pottery Barn’s stores display a classic and simple style that inculcates the client’s products into enhancing the store’s design. Each store contains a grand lobby, tabletop shop, design studio, wood and solid floors, bay windows, and Italian plaster that mirror the organization’s agreeable and exemplary and aesthetical home goods.
5. Trinchero Napa Valley | BAR Architects
Location: St. Helena, California
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: Trinchero Family Estates
Status: Completed in 2007
BAR planned Trinchero Napa Valley Winery in three independent structures spread across 3.45 sections of land that are a blend of modern winery features with craftsman style architecture – Production Center with fermentation tanks and barrel stockpiling. A Hospitality Center that highlights indoor and outside kitchens and eating spaces, vinegar solera, wood burning ovens, reserve tasting room, and cellar, and culinary gardens and speakeasy-style VIP tasting rooms, arranged in a one-story agrarian structure with custom fixtures, a vintage taxidermy establishment, and event, and office spaces. The property’s structure mixes Italian and California impacts and the historical backdrop of the family and the district. The structures encase a yard and are encircled by neighboring vineyards providing the users with flexible space and greenery.
6. Fountaingrove Clubhouse
Location: Santa Rosa, California
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: Fountaingrove Golf & Country Club
Status: Under construction
The new plan of the sustainable, cost-effective, and communal clubhouse after the 2017 fire, commends natural ventilation, clerestory windows skylights, natural materials, and fire-resistant materials with steel bar framework and pan deck, and the art of working with expressive, however minimal detailing. The open, extensive arrangement gives boundless adaptability with blurred compartmentalization of outdoor-indoor activities like the structure’s glass window doors facing the valley that can be moved for enormous social occasions and the huge open-air patio which is enhanced by the little lake bordering it to expand the utilization of built areas.
7. Old Sugar Mill
Location: Clarksburg, California
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: Clarksburg Investment Partners LLC
Status: Completed in 2004
The 106 acres of the site, which was originally a brick factory was procured by a developer, in 1993. He renovated the space into a wine-tasting venue which is currently the point of convergence of the valley’s wine industry with 14 wineries, and commercial places, connected by Galeria de Vinho with skylights -an active example of adaptive reuse. Old Sugar Mill accommodates present-day wineries, yet the significant heritage building’s existential block constructed structure is safeguarded. The contrast of red-blocks, open spaces, and high roofs with comfortable current tasting rooms and outdoor areas are exceptionally engaging.
8. Sundance Resort | BAR Architects
Location: Sundance, Utah
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: Sundance Institute
Status: Completed in 1987
Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, a community committed to performing arts, culture, and recreation, preserves the natural landscape of the region. BAR built up the master plan for the base territory, dance and music rehearsal pavilion, a 150-seat screening room and conference space with workplaces, and cabins which provide the framework to incorporate sustainability and creative articulation. In spite of focusing on state-of-the-art facilities, the fixtures picked extrude modern comfort with their western appeal. The creation of public spaces that combine indoor intimacy with the outdoor experience is aided by materials like limestone and old tree trunk columns.
9. Santana Row
Location: San Jose, California
Building Usage: Mix-Use Development
Client: Federal Realty Investment Trust
Status: Phase-I completed in 2002, the project completed in 2004.
Award: Project of the Year and Grand Award, Builder Magazine, 2003, Gold Nugget Merit Award, PCBC, 2003
BAR Architects planned four blocks of the Santana Row 8-square Phase I arrangement. The initial two structures of this high-density urban pattern, The DeForest and The Margo are arcaded lofts and retail structures with the ground floor designs commemorating historic shopping settings. The third structure symmetrically addresses the road with corner tower components and the fourth structure has the focal mechanical plant for the whole development and commercial and office spaces.
10. SFSU Net Zero Student Housing | BAR Architects
Location: San Francisco, California
Building Usage: Student and Faculty Housing
Client: San Francisco State University
Status: Competition – Architecture at Zero 2016 presented by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) and the American Institute of Architects, California Council (AIACC).
BAR designed the SFSU Net Zero Student housing with innovative art replacement building; a concert hall; and mixed-use development including student housing, retail, student administrations, parking, utility associations, stormwater enhancements, landscaping, and lighting. The design intended to enable tenants to measure and manage with their own energy usage that significantly affects the overall building energy use and the rest of the energy requirements are met by an onsite energy-generating green roof, photovoltaic and solar panels, biogas energy components, building-integrated wind turbines, and methane acquired through sewer mining and anaerobic assimilation of wastewater.
11. The Film Archive and Preservation Center
Location: Santa Clarita, California
Building Usage: Student and Faculty Housing
Client: Packard Humanities Institute
Status: Completed in 2008
Award: Excellence in Structural Engineering Awards – Award of Merit, New Construction-Large Project, The Structural Engineers Association of California, 2015, Pinnacle Award of Merit – Commercial Exterior, Marble Institute of America, 2014
BAR takes inspiration from Greek and Italian design, using terracotta rooftop tiles, floors, and hued limestone building components. The Film and Archive Preservation Center’s Collection Storage is a huge, quiet, utilitarian structure—principally underground—housing temperature and humidity controlled collection vaults and services, loading dock, film lab offices, and a central plant and staff workplaces that are associated with the existing underground nitrate film storage vaults for the whole project and the Stoa which is influenced by old Greek Stoas with two-story corridors. It accommodates preservation labs, workrooms, preservationists’ workplaces, and authoritative capacities.
12. Irvine Spectrum Center
Location: Irvine, California
Building Usage: Commercial and Retail
Client: The Irvine Company
Status: Designed Phase III – Completed in 2002
Spanish design influenced town center, pedestrian boulevards, and squares, the Irvine Range Center-Stage III was designed by BAR who built up a retail and entertainment complex. The structure is found where two significant Southern California freeways meet, and it offers retail, eating, and recreational spots with lighting and architectural details and landscaping; making a durable and cohesive communal gathering space.
13. Library of Congress – Packard Campus | BAR Architects
Location: Culpeper, Virginia
Building Usage: Arts and Entertainment
Client: Packard Humanities Institute
Status: Completed in 2005
The Library of Congress is a conservation and preservation facility, with climate-controlled collections building, a 208-seat theater, 9 sound structure, and 2 screening rooms, nitrate film vaults, workplaces, and a particular mechanical plant for the whole facility. This urban and natural plan fuses green rooftops that outwardly coordinate this huge structure into the slope. This curved stepped green, and sustainable structure frames around the site and benefits from the earth’s natural shading and cooling properties.
14. Yotel, San Francisco
Location: San Francisco, California
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: Yotel & Synapse Development
Status: Completed in 2019
Awards: Excellence in Structural Engineering – Award of Merit, Historic Preservation, Structural Engineers Association of Northern California, 2020
Situated at San Francisco Mid Market redevelopment region, the memorable Grant Building being used as lodging is another case of adaptive reuse that has been LEED Silver-certified. The landmark’s exterior and terracotta, existing marble and iron staircase, and projecting cornices have all been restored. BAR was liable for the interior structure and FF&E for the cabins. The modern ground-floor retail facade is supplanted with truly perfect new materials to underline the greatness of the double-height ground-level space. Yotel’s public facilities include coworking business zones, recreational, retail, and dining spaces.
15. The Belvedere Restaurant | BAR Architects
Location: Beverly Hills, California
Building Usage: Wineries and Hospitality
Client: The Peninsula Beverly Hills
Status: BAR Architects remodeled the interiors of the restaurant in 2016
Architect: Three architects
The Belvedere Café’s rich interiors are inspired by Parisian parlor cantinas, craftsmanship exhibitions and are planned by BAR and EDC, which comprises custom parquet regular white oak floors, decorations, and tall fabrics wrapped and delicate interlacing geometric pattern walls give an exquisite setting to the one of a kind charged workmanship assortment. The terrace with an outdoor fireplace, french limestone fountain, and al fresco dining is framed by dark-steel French doors and windows which open onto the garden-inspired space. Great French-style banquettes and tables are set around the point of convergence: A Podocarpus tree.
