MAP | Metropolitan Architectural Practice

MAP is a trans-disciplinary practice encompassing architecture, design, environment, and media. Based In the San Francisco Bay Area, the breadth of the firm’s expertise + award winning projects are consistently nationally recognized and extend from large-scale commercial and historical landmark projects to a wide variety of residential, media and public works. MAP has produced an inspired team that strives to deliver the highest level of design aesthetic, client service and executive project management. Our approach – while diverse - is client and site specific. It questions conventional assumptions and inspires innovative responses, encourages impassioned research and enables a clear understanding the possibilities revealed throughout the process. The spirit of each individual project – its intrinsic sense of place and spatial relationships within the urban or rural fabric and how that best reflects the desires of the client - is truly at the heart of our collaborative relationship with our clients and our team of consultants, fabricators and creators. It serves as both the foundation and substance for our generative design practice. Whether representing individuals or multi-national corporations, we continue to effectively navigate client needs, budgets, negotiate with government agencies, builders and consultants. Leading through effective design communication and technologies, we conceive, direct and implement imaginative, effective and cost-conscious design solutions. Since 2005, MAP has become an influential voice in the cultural realm of architectural, urban, design practices and environmental concerns. Today, the firm continues to evolve innovative responses to new projects viewed through a wide angle lens of possible approaches. Their commitment to excellence, research and innovation in design practice has been demonstrated through a consistent pattern of award winning projects and fellowships. Our work has been featured in publications such as Architecture, Dwell, ID, Interior Design, Metropolis, PA, SF Gate, the Wall Street Journal & Wired and included in public collections such as the Cooper Hewitt Museum of Design, the Dia, MoMA, and the Whitney Museum of Art. MAP’s current projects include a historical landmark residence in Napa, CA. Originally built in 1953, this residence speaks to the architectural and cultural legacies of mid-century California and its radical departures from East Coast inscriptions. While modest in scale, this residence spoke of the essence of sustainable practices before the term itself was coined. It is constructed of all natural materials – basically 4 materials - old growth redwood, concrete block stainless steel and walls of glass, while its siting speaks to a remarkably prescient passive solar design. MAP has been engaged with the delicate task of restoring and renovating the residence – now firmly in the 21st c, while refusing to submit to nostalgia by simply re-inscribing a discovered time capsule. MAP continues to seek out projects that demand innovative and refreshing solutions to the complex issues and conditions in which we all find ourselves. Whether realized in an built form, a residence, a product, a virtual or time based project or a design, their ambition is to materialize a dynamic and evocative response within the most pragmatic consideration of production and technical concerns. MAP is currently led by two principals. Katherine Lambert, AIA, IIDA and Christiane Robbins.