Douglas Burnham

Douglas Burnham is principal and founder of envelope Architecture+Design, Oakland. His work includes residential, educational, commercial, civic, and hospitality building and renovation projects as well as the design of exhibitions, products, and furniture. He has lectured in the United States and Europe.

His projects of note include the design of the exhibition CCA at 100: Innovation by Design (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2007), a kaleidoscopic ark that houses nearly 40 design works by CCA faculty and alumni. He won first place for his entry in the SFprize 2005: Octavia Boulevard housing competition for a building comprised of "minimum existence" individual living and/or working units. Recognizing that buildings and families change over time, the design proposal envisions the potential expansion of units by combining single units to make larger, multiroom units. Commercial spaces at the street level provide amenities to phenomenally expand those provided in the minimum unit.

Another notable recent project is the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California, a 5,000-square-foot new museum building that takes advantage of its location adjacent to the 101 freeway through a freeway gallery, which engages with the dromoscopic experience of auto travelers. In the Delfina restaurant expansion and renovation in San Francisco, a stage is set for the performance of dining so that the participants are simultaneously spectacle and audience. The Kraft Residence in Los Altos, California, is based on the Japanese garden design strategy of shakkei, or borrowed landscape.

Douglas's work has been published widely in several professional magazines and journals. At Cornell University's School of Architecture he received the Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Prize for his 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.