Designer Crush
Fergus Garber Architects
For more than 35 years, Fergus Garber Architects has played a defining role in shaping residential architecture across the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 1988 by Catharine Fergus Garber, the firm began as a small practice and has since grown into a Palo Alto–based studio known for its thoughtful, place-responsive approach to custom homes, historic renovations, and long-term livability.
Over the course of its history, the firm has designed and renovated more than 100 residences throughout Northern California, the Peninsula, and across the country. While the work spans a wide range of architectural styles, from traditional to contemporary, it is united by a consistent philosophy: homes should reflect how their owners live and evolve over time, rather than adhere to passing trends.
Longevity is central to the firm’s approach. With decades of experience, Fergus Garber Architects focuses on enduring architectural fundamentals such as proportion, clarity of layout, connection to the outdoors, natural light, and flexibility. From the earliest conversations, clients are encouraged to think beyond immediate needs and consider how their homes will support them through different stages of life, including growing families and multigenerational living.
Rather than working within a single stylistic language, the firm designs across multiple architectural traditions. Aesthetics are guided by principles rather than a signature look, allowing each project to respond thoughtfully to its site, context, and client. This approach has made the firm especially respected for historic renovations in Palo Alto and the greater Bay Area, where sensitivity to architectural legacy is essential.
Fergus Garber Architects draws inspiration from a broad architectural lineage, including figures such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Morgan, Birge Clark, and William Wurster. These influences reinforce the firm’s belief that history can inform contemporary design without limiting it, particularly when architecture is treated as a service to the client rather than a predetermined product.
While rooted in tradition, the firm embraces technology where it enhances design quality and collaboration. Tools such as 3D modeling and cloud-based coordination support clarity and efficiency, while hand sketching remains a foundational part of the design process. Technology, in this context, serves craft rather than replacing it.
Looking ahead, the firm anticipates continued evolution in Northern California residential architecture, driven by housing demand, climate considerations, and changing patterns of how people live and gather. Fergus Garber Architects views these shifts as an opportunity to design homes that are more resilient, adaptable, and supportive of health and well-being.
At its core, the practice remains relationship-driven. Through careful listening, collaboration, and a commitment to longevity, Fergus Garber Architects continues to create homes that feel personal, grounded, and built to last, architecture shaped not by trends, but by lives well lived.
Dan and Catharine share more about their practice, it’s inspiration and evolution:
How has being in business for over 35 years shaped your perspective of architectural design?
Catharine: Being in business this long you see certain looks and styles come and go, but there are certain enduring qualities of good architecture—good bones, proportions, flow, layout, connection to outdoors, light and longevity. We recognize that listening is paramount—for example the importance of listening skills and helping clients think long term—helping them think through how they will enjoy living in the future, not just for right now. How will they progress through life in their house and how will their home support them through the changes that occur in a family over those years.
How would you define your aesthetic?
Dan: Aesthetics are often confused with style—they overlap but are different. We design in many different styles, but our aesthetic is pretty consistent and comes from good proportions and principled layouts, high attention to detail and how the elements and materials come together to support and complement the larger concept of the house. These things don’t change much across our projects. We like to keep things simple by getting to the core essentials of a style. We design for longevity vs stylistic trends; our clients are typically living 30 or more years in the houses we design for them so that long view is important.
Which other architects/firms have inspired you and your design process the most?
Catharine: Frank Lloyd Wright for his vision, Julia Morgan for her inventiveness, Charles Moore for bringing scholarship and focus to the experience of architecture, Birge Clark for his service, William Wurster for his productivity, George Washington Smith and Robert Stern for how they use history as their launch point.
What new technology/tools have altered how you do business?
Dan: A few tools that have really altered how we do business are:
- Street/3D view online maps to see nearly any site and house in its neighborhood context in real time on your desktop.
- 3D Bim modeling software allows for greater engagement with our clients, a more comprehensive and coordinated set of documents and allows a team of people to design and work on the same file in real time both in the office and remotely.
- In 2014 we modeled a large house, landscape and site extensively in 3D to be walked through virtually with an early generation of Oculus Rift goggles but that technology still has a way to go to be truly useful on a day-to-day basis.
- Cloud servers have greatly improved the flow, management and coordination of our work especially during the pandemic.
- But none of these things replace the importance and primacy of skilled hand sketching!
How do you foresee architecture in Northern California evolving over the next decade?
Dan: There are going to be a lot more houses. The state is dramatically under housed which is already creating great challenges and pain in our cities. There are also going to be a lot more types of housing. We’re going to see denser, smaller, shared housing—ways that we haven’t explored yet will be adopted and discovered to fit conditions and budgets. We’ll also see more repurposing of existing structures whose uses are waning to uses that are in greater need, like housing.
All houses are going to become much better at supporting how we want and need to live in them as our environment is changing around us. The pandemic is already changing the nature and degree of how we gather with family and friends in and outside of our houses. The fires are already changing the way in which we manage the quality of the air in the houses we design. The widening swing of temperatures is changing the exterior envelopes and mechanical system strategies for our houses. These changes are also driving demand for the rapid evolution of the general technology, equipment and materials that we will use to mitigate these issues, especially to address the ongoing operations of the house to manage our health, comfort and costs.
Lightning Round!
All-time favorite California structure?
Catharine: Just one? Here’s a few:
- William Wurster’s Farmhouse for the Gregory family in Santa Cruz
- Birge Clark’s Lucie Stern Community Center in Palo Alto
- Louis Kahn’s Salk Institute in La Jolla
- Pierre Koenig’s Stahl House in Los Angeles (Case Study House #22)
Best restaurant in the Bay Area for the design?
Catharine: Julia’s Restaurant or Morgan’s Bar & Lounge at Julia Morgan’s Berkeley City Club
If you weren’t an architect, what would you be?
Catharine: I’ve never thought of being anything else. I love my relationship with my clients and helping design their homes.
Dan: An opera singer, it would be amazing to be able to sing like Renee Fleming (because I can’t)!
Original article by Lindsay Shoot