Baumgardner Architecture provides thoughtful architectural guidance, planning, design, construction documentation and oversight for residential and commercial projects in Sonoma County, Marin, Napa, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Joel Baumgardner, Architect, AIA, LEED AP BD+C
Joel is an award-winning architect with over 25 years of experience working on a wide range of residential and commercial projects. He uses his experience, diversity of viewpoint, a deep-rooted environmentalism, delight in art and built form as key guiding principles.

Diversity of Experience and Viewpoint
Joel has been drawing and designing for as long as he can remember. First with wood blocks, then LEGOs, models, tree houses, drafting classes in junior high and high school, and art classes in college. Summers in high school were spent working at the local Sonoma County hardware store, absorbing the elements of building. While at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Joel spent summers working construction jobs and drafting. Further developing his love of architecture, was the year spent abroad in Florence, Italy–balancing the technical rigors of Cal Poly with art and history. These experiences formed the foundation for Joel’s unique perspective, sense of awareness and balance, and diversity of viewpoint.

Environmentalism
Growing up in the beauty of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Sebastopol in particular, led to an inherent appreciation of our connection to nature. Fascinated by passive solar design while in college, Joel expanded his green building knowledge by completing a year of study at Sonoma State University‘s Green Building Professional program. Since then, Joel has co-chaired the American Institute of Architects San Francisco Committee on the Environment, as well as the United States Green Building Council Northern California Chapter – State Legislative Task Force.

Delight
Joel believes that architecture should lift the spirit as an everyday experience. It should surprise and delight. Timeless beauty is stronger than stylistic trends. There must be art in the architecture. His work is rooted in an organic sense of beauty-scale, proportion and detail that inherently connect and resonate.