Bay Area Architecture & Design Summit

As Managing Director for Gensler’s San Francisco office, Hao leads with design and is focused on building a dynamic practice through an open and collaborative culture. An inquisitive architect by nature, he is passionate about transforming experiences based on a deep understanding through research, the craft of technical excellence and a rigor of intellectual thought, all while striving to design beautiful places that impact people for the better. Working with diverse and talented teams, Hao’s projects such as The Tower at PNC Plaza, NVIDIA Headquarters, and Mercedes-Benz USA Headquarters have elevated the firm’s national and international profile and are well known for their high level of innovation and quality. Hao serves as a member of Gensler’s Board of Directors. He is an alumnus of UC Berkeley, where he graduated with Highest Honors, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

Originally from New Jersey with pit stops in New Hampshire, Idaho, and Oregon, Tim has lived in the only two states that don’t let you pump your own gas. Coincidence? Probably. He also knows a thing or two about making new places feel like home. He was first introduced to Prometheus while working on a landscape project at one of our Seattle area Neighborhoods and met us again while designing Mission Dolores Park for the Helen Diller Family Foundation. Call it kismet. Since joining our team, Tim has left his indelible design mark on every one of our Neighborhoods. He brings 20 years of multidisciplinary design experience and a love for the Seahawks to our Prometheus family.

Mike Baker serves as Director of Architecture for oWOW, a vertically integrated real estate development, architecture and construction company based in Oakland, CA. He is a licensed architect with over 15 years of experience in the architecture, engineering and construction industry. He has extensive experience in the multi-family sector and is a passionate advocate for making well designed housing more attainable. Mike is originally from New Jersey and relocated to the Bay Area from New York City in 2019 with his wife and their kitty Pepper. They spend their free time hiking and camping all across California (and beyond.) Mike received his Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie Mellon University and his Master of Science in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University in the City of New York. Mike has served as a frequent guest critic at a number of universities, including Rhode Island School of Design, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Pratt University, The City College of New York & The City University of New York.

John Marx, AIA, is a co-founding principal and chief artistic officer of Form4 Architecture in San Francisco, California. He is responsible for developing Form4 Architecture’s design vision and philosophical language. In order to return a sense of humanity back into architecture, he advocates for the inclusion of Philosophy, Art, and Poetry in the thoughtful making of place by creating emotionally resonant architecture and urban spaces. He is a part time student of Absurdity, Paradox, Kindness, and Balance. John’s design work and writing have been published in over 100 national and international publications. In 2018, the Architectural Review published his monograph “The Absurdity of Beauty - Rebalancing the Modernist Narrative”.  In 2023 he co-edited "Towards Abundance - The Delightful Paradoxes of Gender" with the Architectural Review. He has widely lectured on the topics of Design, Placemaking, Emotional Meaning and Cultural Vibrancy in Silicon Valley and places as diverse as Korea, Italy, Austria, Australia, Canada and the Technion in Israel. John has been going to Burning Man since 2015 and has also written about the importance of its participatory culture with regard to the design process and as a catalyst for social change. Last year, John Marx was lead artist on "Andromeda Reimagined”, a widely celebrated architectural pavilion at Burning Man. In 2020 John was Architect and Co-Lead Artist for the Museum of No Spectators, which debuted virtually in July and was built in 2023. Form4 Architecture has received over 230 design awards and in 2017, John became a Laureate of the American Prize for Architecture. Curated by The Chicago Athenaeum and The European Centre for Architecture the award is recognized nationally and internationally as one of America’s highest public tributes for architecture in the United States. The American Prize for Architecture, is bestowed to an “outstanding practitioner in the United States that has emblazoned a new direction in the history of American Architecture with talent, vision, and commitment and has demonstrated consistent contributions to humanity through the built environment and through the art of architecture.” He also won the 2017 Upstart Award which honors the most innovative, disruptive, and creative business professionals throughout the SF Bay Area. GAFF/ ECC showed John Marx’s work at the Venice Architecture Biennale in Italy in 2016. In 2018, they exhibited his research on ‘2 nd  Century Modernism – Reflections on Abundance’. 2021 sees the exhibition of his watercolors and poetry at Palazzo Mora during the Venice Biennale. ORO press has recently published an award winning 160 page book entitled “ ETUDES The Poetry of Dreams + Other Fragments”. This book focuses on 84 of John's watercolor paintings as well as 42 poems. In 2020 ETUDES won an Indie Book Award for Illustration, and in 2021 John received the James Gates Percival International Prize for Literature. John has served on the Board of the Magic Theatre in San Francisco from 2009 thru 2020 and has chaired its Board over five years. The Magic Theatre honored him with the Sam Shephard Legacy Award in 2018.  John joined the board of the San Francisco Art Institute in 2020 and was Co- Chair from 2021-2023. SFAI is one of the oldest and most prestigious art schools in the United States.