Oct 23 2006
On October 18th, at an award ceremony at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel, the San Francisco Business Times will honor the 100 fastest-growing private companies in the Bay Area. The Zweig Letter Hot Firm Conference will celebrate the 100 fastest-growing architecture & engineering firms in the country on October 26th, at a gala also to be held in San Francisco. SB Architects made both of these listings for the first time this year.
These honors follow upon the heels of top design firm listings in Multi-Housing News (September 2006), Hotel Business, (September 2006) and Hotel Design (April/May 2006), trade publications that track hospitality and multi-family/mixed-use design and development. These listings are based upon both volume of work and editors’ assessments of which firms are most influential in the industry. For the past several years, SB Architects has consistently been included among these publications’ listings of top architects & designers.
In business for nearly five decades, the firm has enjoyed unprecedented growth and has experienced an exciting period of change in the past several years. The venerable design firm has seen the retirement of its founding partner, the emergence of a devoted group of new partners, the birth of a new brand identity and the re-location of its San Francisco practice to a new, expanded headquarters on the city’s waterfront. Concurrently, it has nearly doubled in size and billings, and has firmly established itself at the head of the class in its two primary practice areas: hotels & resorts and urban mixed-use projects, expanding upon its established reputation in multi-family housing design.
John Eller, the firm’s president and principal, cites balance and teamwork as key factors in the firm’s successes: “Every step we take involves a balance. In the past several years, we have effectively taken the firm in new directions, capitalizing upon new opportunities, but we never lose site of the reputation that was over four decades in the making. It’s what makes our success sustainable.”
The firm’s diverse project mix is a strategic goal. “The range of work is extremely exciting. We have high-rise mixed-use towers in Miami, strategic urban infill in San Francisco, new towns in the Guandong province of China, and 13 resorts in design or under construction in the Caribbean,” states Scott Lee, senior vice president and principal.
With a combined staff of 90 professionals in its two offices, SB Architects remains a hands-on, design-oriented practice. “We have the technical capabilities and the understanding to take even the largest projects from initial concept through construction, anywhere in the world,” says Jonathan Wyman, vice president and director of business development. “But we are a boutique practice at heart. Integrity in design, connection to the client and balance in our corporate culture are integral to our firm’s identity.”
In over forty years of practice, SB Architects has built a long-standing reputation for excellence in the planning and design of large-scale multi-family residential, mixed-use, hotel, resort and vacation ownership projects. The firm’s portfolio of work includes projects throughout the United States, in Mexico, South America, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, China, Indonesia, Egypt and the Middle East. Known for site-sensitive, contextually appropriate design, SB Architects has received over 185 awards for design excellence.