Dwell Magazine Presents: Design, Art, and Non-Hierarchical Collaboration
William Hanley in conversation with Anand Sheth
Date & Time:
Friday, April 18, 2025
2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Location:
San Francisco Art Fair Theater
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.
Participating designers include:
Office of Tangible Space
Sun at Six
Devan Ponce and Moses Isaac
Estudio Material
Kate Greenberg
Medium Small
Studio Anand Sheth
White Dirt Studio
The Long Confidence
Ege Carpets
PEARL Floral Design
William Hanley is the editor-in-chief of Dwell, where he leads the 25-year-old design magazine’s editorial and creative teams. As a writer and content producer, his coverage of architecture, design, and visual art strives to make conceptually daring work exciting for a broad audience. At Dwell, he has aimed to cover ambitious contemporary design with a perspective that is human-centered, socially and ecologically progressive, and defiantly optimistic. It’s remarkable design for real people. He was previously executive editor at Surface magazine, a senior editor at Architectural Record, news editor at ArtNews, and a staff writer for Rhizome, among other roles, and he has built content strategies for several early-stage and growth companies. He is based in New York City and New Orleans.
Studio Anand Sheth is a bicoastal multidisciplinary design practice that approaches architecture and interiors from a decidedly conceptual and artful point of view.
Strongly rooted in San Francisco, the firm’s owner and principal architect Anand Sheth has satellite offices in Los Angeles and New York while remaining informed by core values imbued from his home city, including a resilient and rebellious spirit, and vulnerable and generous hospitality.
A licensed Bay Area architect and curator, Anand Sheth leads unconventional design projects, creating functional architecture, interiors, and furnishings that communicate as directly as artworks.