PART ONE: YOUTH
December 11, 1939: Daniel Solomon was born in San Francisco. Both the time and the place figure prominently in the lifetime that follows. Time and place engage in a fierce, antagonistic struggle throughout, with our protagonist eventually playing the role of sensible mediator.
September 1954 to June 1957: attends George Washington High School, San Francisco. Significance: (1) It is a magnificent San Francisco building, (WPA project by Timothy Pfleuger, 1936) (2) It was and is a large, vividly mixed-race, mixed-income public school. (3) Principal high school accomplishment was brief ascendancy to first-string varsity halfback.
September 1962 to June 1963: B. Arch, Columbia University. Professional degree from a real architecture school at the height of the brutalist phase of modernism. A ghastly experience, except for beginning a life-long romance with New York.
Summer 1962; June 1963 to August 1964: Junior Architect in the office of Charles Warren Callister; laid the groundwork for much that followed. Warren, as he was known, is a now largely forgotten architect of original spirit and considerable accomplishment. By choice, his work stood far outside the bland, meekly regionalized mid-century modernism of the local architecture establishment. Warren was a highly collaborative designer, who had assembled a coterie of talented people. His romantic, often theatrical work depended on masterly detail, with liberal quotations from the Bay Region Arts and Crafts generation of Bernard Maybeck and Julia Morgan and more than a whiff of Taliesin. He was an unembarrassed eclectic. I learned a lot.
September 1964 to June 1965: Office of Lawrence Halprin in its most active period. An introduction to landscape and urban design.
1966: Hired as Lecturer U.C. Berkeley Department of Landscape Architecture, Fall Semester: Department of Architecture, Spring Semester.
1967: Tenure track Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, UC Berkeley. The next thirty-five years on the Berkeley faculty grounded the rest of this story.
1977: Publication of Collage City, by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter: Life changing.
1975-1978: NEA Grants to produce Change Without Loss, Residential Design Standards for the San Francisco Department of City Planning
1977-1978: Designed and built Pacific Heights Townhouses, San Francisco (see project >) as demonstration of the ideas in Change Without Loss.
1991: Taught The Pedestrian Pocket Studio at UC Berkeley with Peter Calthorpe; Invited Andres Duany to Berkeley for Symposium.
1992: Designed and built Fulton Grove, San Francisco (see project >)
1993: Co-founded Congress for the New Urbanism with Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Stephanous Polyzoides and Elizabeth Moule
1994: Co-authored and edited Charter of the New Urbanism; Secretary of HUD, Henry Cisneros signed the Charter and declared it to be guiding principles for HUD.
1995 and 1997: Architectural Digest: 100 Foremost Architects
1996: Formalized long-standing relationships with John Ellis and Anne Torney, initially as Solomon Inc., later as Daniel Solomon Design Partners
1998: Seaside Prize for Contributions to American Urbanism
2004: Maybeck Award, California AIA for Lifetime Achievement in Design
2008: “Housing Hero,” San Francisco Housing Action Coalition
2012: Joined Mithun as partner in Mithun/Solomon
2013: Silver SPUR Award, from SPUR
As an Architect
See excerpts of work under project headings on Home page.
Mithun/Solomon, Partner 2012 - present
Daniel Solomon Design Partners, 2008 - 2012
WRT-Solomon E.T.C. 2001 - 2008
Solomon E.T.C. 1996 - 2001
Daniel Solomon and Associates 1967 - 1996
As a Teacher
University of Rome Sapienza, Visiting Professor, 2015
University of Maryland, KEA Distinguished Professor, 2011
University of California, Berkeley: Professor of Architecture, 1979 to 2000; Emeritus 2000 - present;
Associate Professor, 1973-1979; Assistant Professor, 1967-1972; Lecturer, 1966
University of Minnesota, Cass Gilbert Visiting Professor, Fall 1992
Columbia University, Adjunct Visiting Professor, New York, 1987
University of Southern California, Visiting Assistant Professor, Fall 1969
As a Writer
Daniel Solomon is the author of many articles and four books.
Bedside Essays for Lovers (of Cities) (2012 Island Press eBook)
ReBuilding (1992 Princeton Architectural Press)
Global City Blues (2003 Island Press)
Cosmopolis (2008 Distributed Art Publications, Inc.)