LAKE envisions a thriving urban promenade filled with Black-owned and Black-centered businesses occupying flexible indoor and outdoor spaces that support gathering, shopping, experiencing, and celebrating Oakland’s vibrant community and culture.

Our long-time clients sought to create a private retreat hidden in the forested hills of Northern California, a house where an extended community of family, friends, and colleagues could gather.

Working closely with the Urban Alchemy team in San Francisco, we transformed a blighted city corner into a park where adults can rest, play games, and enjoy free coffee, tea, and water in a safe, clean environment.

PROXY is a temporary open space activating two vacant parcels in the heart of San Francisco’s Hayes Valley neighborhood.

When an industrial building near their Berkeley office became available, the creative agency John McNeil Studio asked Envelope to turn it into the ultimate flex space: a place for video shoots, lectures, strategy sessions, art openings, and much more.

2214 is a curatorial overlay to our practice, an experiment exploring the possibilities that arise when practitioners from divergent areas of interest come together to consider a set of common questions.

The Pilara Foundation chose to create a home for its critically acclaimed photography collection in an unlikely location: a historic timber-framed warehouse perched over the San Francisco Bay.

NOW Hunters Point takes the practice of urban activation and applies it as an iterative, community-led visioning process to the Pacific Gas and Electric Hunters Point site. In the 10 years that NOW Hunters Point had been operational, it hosted over 216 activations (from job training to movie nights, to even a circus) and engaged with over 30,000 visitors.

CHROMA, a new mixed use development in the heart of Midtown Tucson, brings a dynamic infusion of commercial, office, residential, and community uses to a changing neighborhood.

At first glance, a run-down Victorian seemed like an unlikely home for the founder of John McNeil Studio and his family.

Andrew Barnett, formerly of Ecco Caffe, approached envelope a+d to work on his espresso bar after getting to know the firm through his curatorial role in the Coffee Pavilion that we designed for Slow Food Nation. Barnett had located a scrappy space behind Duc Loi Supermarket in the Mission, and he teamed up with Anthony Myint of Mission Chinese Food to bring waffles and salads into the mix. envelope’s challenge was to fit the pedigree and ambition of Barnett and Myint, both forerunners in their fields, into 300 square feet and, on a budget to match. In order to clearly demarcate Barnett and Myint’s distinct concepts, we employed a material change at the diagonal seam that is created by the perpendicular walls. The food concept, constrained by health standards for kitchens, was kept cool and utilitarian through the use of stainless steel, white ceramic tile and concrete. The espresso bar, anchored by a leggy oak service platform, was warmed to match its offerings with a honey-hued oak plywood wall in a hexagonal pattern designed and fabricated in-house. A brick red steel window frame opens to the side street, creating a ledge for people to stand and lean as they look onto the hubbub of the Mission.