Common Sense Design has completed several hundred residential and small commercial projects since its inception in 1990. Since we are a small firm, we are able to maintain the close personal involvement which smaller projects demand. We delight in working collaboratively on our projects with our clients, builders, other professionals, tradespeople, artists, and craftspeople.

Pete Gang, Principal
"A 1980 graduate of MIT (in Architecture), I am one of a small number of architects who has years of experience in the trenches as a hands-on licensed general building contractor (Common Sense Construction, 1986 through 1990) -- as well as years in other architecture firms prior to 1985. I have been a licensed architect in California since 1991.

“ I have been immersed in the world of design and building for more than half of my years.

" I suppose I defy the stereotypes and puzzle more than a few people by combining hands-on experience with a strong sense of design. Any self-respecting artisan or craftsperson, it seems, has to be conversant in both the practical and aesthetic realms.

" I got messed up in the world of design and building because I love to build. I got messed up in the worlds of Natural Building and Green Building when I could no longer overlook the social and environmental ills that we have created here in the over-developed First World (an asthma epidemic, the grim Nowhere of suburbia, rivers and waterways that are unsafe for swimming, social alienation, and more) and the attendant external costs (decimation of once-intact ecosystems and cultures, global climate change, acid rain, species extinction, clearcut forests, and on and on).

“ I am a founding Board Member of the Redwood Empire Chapter of the US Green Building Council, working to hasten the greening of conventional practices locally. As one of the founding core faculty members of the Green Building Professional Certificate Program at Sonoma State University -- one of the first stand-alone professional-level Green Building programs in the country – I am challenged to keep pace with a rapidly-expanding body of knowledge that is changing the way we build our buildings.

“ I am a runner, a mountain biker, a skier, a climber, and a player of flutes and whistles.”

"As generalists, as Big-Picture thinkers, we (big-A) Architects have a responsibility to paint the picture of, and steer the big boat of our society toward, a more hopeful future."