We are on a mission to build the future we want to live in. We do this by re-inventing houses as complexes of two or more homes that foster family, community, and health!
Respect & collaboration
It is our job to listen to your needs, your goals, and wants to craft a design that solves your unique problems. This takes time. We get to know each client and spend the time necessary to understand your lifestyle, become familiar with your style, analyze your property, and research local rules and regulations. We expect all designers and builders to respect each other’s experience, to listen to you and each other, and to collaborate for the benefit of the client and the quality of the final building. Our team listens to our clients throughout the entire process. The best projects result from a great team effort.
Transparency & trust
We understand that construction is a stressful undertaking. This is why we aim to make it as straightforward and transparent as possible. All project finances are clear and transparent in our app, and you can track all invoices, payments, change orders, and past decisions with just a click of a button.
Technology that improves the quality of your experience - and what you build
Our technology provides an open platform for you to manage the mission-critical aspects of your project. We set standards for milestones, deliverables, and team expectations - and guide you from start to finish so you can stress less and focus on creating the best possible project. Every client gets a private project page to keep all files, agreements, communication, and payments organized. Communicate with your team and easily manage proposals, agreements, construction bids, invoices, and payments.
A holistic approach to sustainability
All of our projects strive to be as sustainable as possible within our client’s budget. This means we source sustainable materials, consider lifecycle costs of design decisions, and collaborate with our clients to make choices that reduce energy and water consumption. We design for healthy indoor environments while making spaces that are durable and long-lasting. Further, our projects look to connect the building with the surrounding landscape, making homes that are great to live in while being beneficial to the planet.
Transparency with our costs and fees
“What is better: uncomfortable truth or comfortable lies? Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.” - Glennon Doyle
We put real, all-inclusive project costs on our website. We are hyper-efficient and buy from local suppliers with trade discounts earned over decades, we hire local labor with crews that work well together. We usually start with a free phone call to assess your property, we assess your property using google earth and share all the hidden costs that others won’t tell you.
If we look like a good fit for your project, the next step is to have our design/build team provide a consultation and a proposal. The consultation and proposal is a full day’s work, and we aim to provide the best proposals in the industry. Our proposals are so good that you can use them to manage your entire project.
If you approve the proposal, we formally start work following the payment of a fixed $5,000 Design/Build Fee which covers team-assignment, project administration, estimating, use of our management app, insurances and other overhead costs throughout the life of the project.
Experience matters
A decade of experience dedicated to creating custom spaces that are tailored to maximize quality of life for over 1,000 families.
Experience
One great thing about having a diverse team of designers and builders is that combined, we have a vast range of experience that touches projects of all types, sizes, budgets, and styles. We have designers who are experts in renovating historic homes and others who are award-winning modern designers. Our builders bring expertise from the careful craftsmanship of fine cabinet making to the organizational skills needed to manage large, complex projects. And behind us, we have a network of great consultants and subcontractors who we bring in to make sure our projects are well designed, high-performance, and executed with a high level of craft.
Teamwork
Design-build means you get one team from start to finish. The designers and builders work together to give you the information you need to make the best decisions, and it allows us to guide projects along, taking advantage of the experience of excellent designers and skilled builders. With this approach, our clients benefit as a single company guides the project from start to finish. Of course, our team is only part of the equation. We realize that many people are needed in order to execute a high-quality project, from the designer and builders to outside consultants and the permit review staff at the city. And of course, the most important team member is you, our client.
Meet our team
Founded in Berkeley and with talented designers and builders across the Bay Area, our exceptional team is ready to tackle projects in communities across the West Coast. We pride ourselves in offering personalized services for our clients’ specific needs and our people are experts in a wide range of project types. Learn more about each member of our team through the profiles below:
A New Path Forward
The New Avenue Manifesto
Cities are the beating hearts of human civilization. Cities are incubators for economic growth, technological innovation, artistic revolution, scientific discovery, and social progress. Cities are where two-thirds of humanity live, love, dream, work, play, dance, raise families, and, ultimately, die. In many respects, a map of the world’s major cities is a more accurate representation of the structure and flow of historical power than a globe divided into nation-states.
Why are cities so vibrant? What powers this urban dynamism?
Density.
If you live in a small town, civic life is limited. Say you want to open a restaurant. For that restaurant to stay afloat, your menu needs to appeal to virtually every resident, so the only restaurants that survive are generic. But now, say you move to a city and open a restaurant. Because so many more people live nearby, your establishment only needs to attract a tiny percentage of them to succeed, so you can focus on making the food only you can make, refining what makes you special. Even better, your city is a laboratory for thousands of similar experiments running in parallel. Most will fail, but those that succeed pioneer fresh niches, unlocking new possibilities for everyone.
Urban flourishing isn’t limited to gastronomy. The same principle of abundance applies to ideas, vocations, relationships, beliefs, lifestyles, and every other realm of human endeavor. That’s why people have been flocking to cities for generations. With their constant flux of diversity and opportunity, cities are the most likely place to create a better life for you and your loved ones.
Density also generates profound positive side effects. It curtails suburban sprawl. It decreases per capita carbon emissions. It reduces pressure on biodiversity and outlying wildlands. It means walkable neighborhoods, shorter commutes, and deeply interconnected communities.
The San Francisco Bay Area is a global hub that exemplifies many of the benefits of urban living. It boasts world-class trails, beaches, parks, open spaces, and wetlands. It birthed Google, the Black Panthers, fortune cookies, the Grateful Dead, Pixar, E40, the iPhone, Zendaya, and Dune. It is a hotbed of activism, invention, scientific research, cultural experimentation, entrepreneurship, and environmental advocacy. No wonder it attracts folks from every corner of planet Earth.
Homes are the building blocks of the Bay Area. Home is where we care for ourselves, our parents, and our children. Home is where we make the time and space to become who we want to be. Home is where we cultivate community. Home is where great breakthroughs begin. Home is where an entrepreneur chases their big idea on nights and weekends, an architect creates their career-defining design, a writer pens their first screenplay or novel, or a musician invents a new sound.
Look closely and you’ll find that many of the Bay Area’s greatest creations came to life in home offices, garages, kitchens, and backyards. HP, Apple, and Google all started in suburban garages in Silicon Valley. The Grateful Dead practiced in a parent’s home in Menlo Park. George Lucas’s childhood in Modesto inspired his first commercial success, American Graffiti, and he then changed Hollywood forever by making Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Pixar—all from a ranch in Marin.
Success starts at home, but the Bay Area has a problem: there aren’t enough homes for the many people who want to live here.
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