San Francisco Art Fair - Dwell Magazine Presents: Design, Art, and Non-Hierarchical Collaboration - William Hanley in conversation with Anand Sheth

San Francisco architect and curator Anand Sheth discusses his design for the fair’s theater space, placing the furnishings included in the context of what’s going on in contemporary Bay Area design more broadly. Sheth has called San Francisco home for 19 years, since studying at the California College of the Arts. Today, he is potentially best known around the city for his bars and restaurants, including a string of wine bars with cult followings (one of which has an excellent dance floor), as well as unusually thoughtful commercial offices, and homes including his own studio and residence in a renovated Victorian. He started his studio with a desire to “unlearn” the hierarchical traditions of the architecture profession in order to create an atypically collaborative way of working. With that in mind, he has asked Bay-Area design studios to contribute furnishings to the theater space with the aim of creating a casual domestic setting that highlights some of the best designers in the region. Sheth says that Bay-Area design has a fundamentally inclusive approach and a spirit of “unapologetic righteousness.” We ask him to tell us what that means in practice.