About Us: People: Stephen M. Rynerson, principal

	Stephen Rynerson

As a young man Mr. Rynerson relished opportunities to experience other environments. Summer trips around California with the family and stories of Paris from his French grandmother opened his mind to new possibilities. In school he studied French-Gothic and Roman Architecture. His father, an engineer at nearby Long Beach Naval Shipyard, encouraged him to take mechanical drawing. Out of Lakewood would come a mind obsessed with Quality of Life, the myriad transactions between humans and their environment.

In 1971, while enrolled at UC Santa Cruz’s Merrill College of Community Studies, Mr. Rynerson joined the builders of the futuristic village of Arcosanti, near Prescott, Arizona. Under the direction of visionary architect Paolo Soleri, Mr. Rynerson and others poured the foundations and built workers’ housing. Mr. Rynerson came away from the experience believing it wasn’t possible for one person to design a city, but it did fire his passions about the possibilities of architecture. In 1972 he applied to and was accepted at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Architecture.

At Berkeley Mr. Rynerson studied under Sim van der Ryn, just prior to Mr. van der Ryn’s nomination as State Architect of California. In 1973 he joined a collective of student architects and other builders working on a house in Bolinas. “It was a great time to be at Cal, because architects were being pushed out of the Ivory Tower and more into listening to the end-user,” says Mr. Rynerson of his training at Berkeley.

Upon graduating, Mr. Rynerson and his wife Juanita, lived for a time on the Mendocino coast, but in 1975 moved to back the Bay Area. While working as an estimator for a tile contractor, Mr. Rynerson enrolled in a course in Victorian Architecture. The class was co-taught by Judith Lynch and Gary Kray, cofounder of San Francisco Victoriana, a thriving restoration service. Mr. Kray was looking for an estimator, but it turned out he really needed a designer.

For the next three years Mr. Rynerson performed analysis and detective work in his role as designer for San Francisco Victoriana. Inspecting original drawings, removing inappropriate finishes and materials to examine “scar” outlines, searching for “twins” and generally getting into the minds of builders of the 19^th century, he sorted out the essential clues needed to bring about authentic restorations of San Francisco’s beloved old houses.

In addition to specifying the restoration work, Mr. Rynerson supervised the milling of both decorative and structural pieces, gaining an fundamental understanding of Victorian, Craftsman and Beaux Arts artisanship that continues to inform his work today.

In 1978 Mr. Rynerson struck out on his own with a commission to design a prime retail store in the Victorian style at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. The client, Crazy Shirts of Hawaii (view project 1 | view project 2), liked the result so well they continued to award design work to Mr. Rynerson, leading to dozens of stores in 10 states.

As a member of Artistic License, an organization of Bay Area artists and artisans, Mr. Rynerson met and worked with many outstanding practitioners of the building arts. Wood-turner Gail Redman, introduced Mr. Rynerson to architect Patrick O’Brien, her husband. The two tackled several commissions in the mid-1980’s as informal partners, and in 1989 formed the architecture firm of Rynerson & O’Brien, also known as ROBA.

Mr. Rynerson cites Julia Morgan, Bernard Maybeck, Ernest Coxhead, Willis Polk, McKim Mead & White, and in general the Beaux Arts tradition as being among his chief inspirations. “The cross-fertilization of Beaux Arts and Arts & Crafts accounts for a lot of what is inspirational in the built environment of the Bay Area,” says Mr. Rynerson.

Mr. Rynerson lives in Albany, California, with his wife Juanita and has two sons.

See also Patrick O’Brien