Backen & Gillam Architects

Backen & Gillam Architects is an award winning architectural design firm formed in 1996. The firm has three offices, one located in Sausalito near the San Francisco Bay waterfront, our second, a custom designed office in St. Helena adjacent to the restaurant, Archetype, and our third newly acquired office in Beverly Hills. Principals Howard J. Backen, Jim Gillam, John Taft, Luca Pignata, Silvia Nobili, and Kirby Lee along with the firm’s 70 employees, bring a wide range of experience to Backen & Gillam projects. This experience enables the firm to provide clients with the very best in design and project management in a number of specialty building types, including private residences, resorts, restaurants and wineries. In the twenty two years since its opening, the firm has designed over 50 upscale homes, 40 wineries, seven major resorts, 20 restaurants, a new line of retail stores for RH (Restoration Hardware) and Williams Sonoma Home, an equestrian center, The Napa Valley Reserve (a private members-only vineyard and winery which has approximately 400 members), and the Performing Arts Center for St. Helena, CA. Aside from being featured in numerous publications, many of the firm’s projects have earned coveted design industry awards, including Hospitality Design Magazine’s Best “Green” Design, First Honor Awards from AIA/Housing Magazine and the Presidential Award for Design Excellence. In 1992, Howard J. Backen was awarded a Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects, which is the highest honor in the profession, and served as a juror for the 2001 California AIA awards. The firm has been featured as one of the top 100 Architects in Architectural Digest (2007-2016) and one of the top 30 in the Robb Report. In 2013, Rizzoli Inc published From The Land, which has now become a best selling architecture book.