
Takashi Yanai, FAIA
Takashi Yanai is a Partner at Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects and has been Residential Studio Director since 2004. Takashi is also currently leading EYRC’s San Francisco Studio.
Prior to practice, Takashi was a design journalist and editor at GA Houses in Tokyo where his work and travels provided the seeds for his design philosophy. Today his work is rooted in its contemplative relationship to landscape and is a continuation of the California Modernist ethos infused with reinterpretations of traditional Japanese elements. In 2017 he was elevated to the AIA College of Fellows in recognition of his residential work, which articulates how architecture can “connect man and nature through masterful siting and exceptional craft.” Takashi serves on the SFMOMA Photography Accessions as well as the Architecture+Design Accessions Committees and has also been appointed the Chair of the National AIA Committee on Design for 2021.
His professional activities, travels and personal inspirations are well-documented and widely followed (57,000 followers) on his Instagram account @t_yanai. Takashi has a degree in Literature with distinction from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters in Architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Joyce Polhamus, FAIA
As SmithGroup’s Senior Housing and Longevity Living Market Leader, Joyce champions the advancement of best practices in senior living design for clients and practitioners across the firm. Early in her career, she recognized the institutional and impersonal nature of senior living environments and embraced the challenge of infusing these spaces with comfort, beauty, flexibility, livability, and sustainability. Joyce founded the Senior Living Studio and later excelled as the Healthcare Studio Leader, guiding a team of 90 professionals on award-winning healthcare and senior living projects.
In 2015, Joyce was appointed Office Director of SmithGroup’s San Francisco office, where she established the engineering, landscape architecture, and urban planning disciplines, and initiated new locations in Sacramento and the Pacific Northwest. Under her leadership, the office cultivated a culture of design excellence, resulting in projects that received both local and national design awards.
Joyce has served as the chair of the AIA’s National Design for Aging Knowledge Community and is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects. In recognition of her commitment to the profession, she received the Legacy Award recipient for ENR California. An ardent animal lover, Joyce currently serves as a member of Muttville Senior Dog Rescue’s Board of Directors.

Corbin Keech
Corbin Keech is an architect, urban designer, and writer based in Chicago, Illinois. He is currently a Senior Project Leader with Studio Gang.
Corbin is driven by the inherent optimism of building and the hybridization of ethnographic studies, formalism, and ecological research to deliver new types of architecture. His professional experience is composed of cultural projects, multifamily housing, and higher-education buildings, with a growing expertise in adaptive reuse. He has worked on many projects since joining Studio Gang, including the Kresge College Expansion, Kō’ula, City Hyde Park, and Civic Commons. Corbin most recently served as Project Leader for the University of Kentucky Gray Design Building, which transformed a century-old tobacco warehouse into a 21st-century, cross-disciplinary learning environment.
He received his Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in 2011. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Kansas State University’s College of Architecture, Planning and Design in 2006. His architectural work has been recognized by the AIA, IIDA, Interior Design, Contract, Communication Arts. His written work has been published by BI Publications, CLOG Magazine, Saturated Space, and LOKÉ Magazine

Mui Ho
Mui Ho got her start as an architect working for Kevin Roche and Dingaloo Associates in New Haven and with Marquis Associates in SF and Hirshen,
Gammill Architects in Berkeley, before going on to run her own office. She has been a practicing architect, as well as an educator—teaching architecture for over 30 years at University of California at Berkeley. In 1996, the Association Collegiate Schools of Architecture presented her with the Distinguished Professor Award. In 1973, she and a friend established the Organization of Women Architects. The organization remains an active support network in the San Francisco Bay Area for the many women involved in architecture, planning, landscape architecture, interior and graphic design.
Known for her interest in vernacular architecture and her work with community organizations, she has a strong interest in sustainable architecture and the design and preservation of existing spaces. Her Chinatown Alleyway Study was adopted by the San Francisco Planning Department in the 1980s, which recommended restoring Chinatown’s alleyways into tree lined pedestrian byways with benches, murals, car barriers and street lighting. She believes that architecture, as a part of a culture, must relate to its time, place, and people.
In her practice, Mui’s major work outside of the US has involved the design of a variety of buildings for the Guangdong Peizheng College in China including auditorium, student activity center, clinic, faculty and student housing and the planning and landscaping of the college campus. For her design contribution to the college, she became an Honorary Citizen of Quangdong in 1997.
Mui earned her Bachelor of Sciences in 1962 from Cornell. She went on to earn her architectural degree from Cornell University in 1966 after one year of study at Pratt Institute.

Lisa Iwamoto
LISA IWAMOTO is Founding Partner of IwamotoScott Architecture which she leads together with her Partner, Craig Scott. IwamotoScott has received numerous awards including the Cooper Hewitt/Smithsonian National Design Award, Interior Design Hall of Fame, the Architectural League’s Emerging Voices and Young Architects, Architectural Record’s Design Vanguard, over twenty AIA Design Awards including a National Award, P/A Award and numerous other architecture and interior awards. Their work has been published in hundreds of journals and exhibited in numerous museums and galleries. Lisa received her Master of Architecture degree with Distinction from Harvard University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Structural Engineering from the University of Colorado. She is author of Digital Fabrications: Architectural and Material Techniques published in 2009 by Princeton Architectural Press and is Professor and Chair, Department of Architecture at the University of California Berkeley.