Aardvark Architecture

We absolutely love working with Sean! His boundless energy and creativity are infectious, and he's always on top of everything. Not only is he incredibly organized, but his communication skills are top-notch. Sean is always there to listen and ensure that we're comfortable every step of the way, demonstrating true professionalism. Our project was quite challenging, requiring us to design a single-family home while incorporating six oaks and five redwoods into the layout. While other architects were apprehensive, Sean embraced the challenge with confidence, assuring us that he could deliver our dream home and navigate the permitting process seamlessly. True to his word, Sean crafted a design that exceeded our expectations. It's a stunning double-story contemporary courtyard home around a set of gargantuan redwoods accompanied by an ADU. We love the strategically placed windows flooding the space with natural light and offering breathtaking views. His 3D modeling walkthroughs, shared as YouTube videos, were invaluable in helping us visualize our future sanctuary-like home and share our excitement with loved ones abroad. In addition to his expertise, Sean curated a team of trusted professionals, including landscape, civil, structural, and MEP experts, as well as builders offering a range of services and prices. This support was especially appreciated as first-time homebuilders. Despite the challenges posed by the heritage trees, Sean's positive attitude and exceptional project management skills ensured a successful outcome. Working with Sean has been a pleasure, and we wholeheartedly recommend him to anyone seeking a dedicated and talented architect.

I had the pleasure of working with Sean, an exceptional architect who performed a ground-up redesign of our home’s interior. The transformation has been nothing short of remarkable, blending warm, yet modern design elements with functional living spaces. The introduction of a skylight and vaulted ceilings infused our home with much needed natural light, creating an airy and open atmosphere. Additionally, Sean was able to give us a walk-in closet, a walk-in pantry, and a coat closet, all which I never imagined would fit in our space! His clever use of space-maximizing techniques ensured that every square inch was utilized efficiently, without sacrificing style or comfort. What set this experience apart was Sean’s collaborative approach. He not only understood our goals and vision, he effectively translated them into a reality that resonated with our personal aesthetic. I can’t emphasize enough that his expertise and willingness to work closely with us resulted in a home that not only meets our needs but also exceeds our expectations. We are deeply appreciative of the dedication and attention to detail that went into redesigning our home. It’s a testament to the Sean’s skill and creativity that we can now enjoy a space that is both beautiful and perfectly suited to our lifestyle. We are in the home stretch towards completion and seeing what was on paper come to fruition is truly breathtaking!

We are so glad we hired Sean to design our home remodel, and we honestly wish we would have just hired him to build a brand new house instead of a remodel (and to be fair, he did try to encourage us to do that, but we didn't listen). The new areas he designed are basically our favorite parts of the house - our commercial kitchen with double islands, walk in pantry, and 12ft ceilings next to a wall of glass that overlooks our beautiful outdoor kitchen and covered patio with a double sided fireplace. He also incorporated some very unique design ideas for our pool bathroom and outdoor shower, which looks super cool even though it's a fairly small structure. Sean also really helped us out by immediately filing for permit review before we even really got started because he knew that San Jose was really backed up and wanted us to get our permits ASAP (which we did - 3 months! During COVID times). Every time we met, he was able to show us YouTube video walkthroughs and make any desired changes on the spot. I feel like I was so familiar with how the house was supposed to look because I had seen it so often in 3D and that really helped me answer questions from our workers as they came up. He also incorporated some fun ideas like hidden doors - we have four in our house! He was a trooper, hanging in there with us despite many constraints on his design (we were keeping the exterior footprint and roof on the house, which prevented some additional cool ideas he had that we weren't able to implement) He seamlessly blended the existing footprint with the new design elements to create something we absolutely love. Overall, we had a really positive experience with Sean. We were completely unfamiliar with how a home remodel/rebuild would work and he helped walk us through every step, as well as coordinated with our contractors to get their questions answered. If we could do it over again, we would have let him have full creative freedom to build something brand new because his creativity and eye for detail was beyond what we expected.

Sean with Aardvark Architecture is the best architect! We are so happy with the amazing detached home office and covered pergola he designed for our backyard. Our whole house lives so much larger now that we're fully using our whole property. Aardvark Architecture delivered on everything we asked for and so much more. Aardvark not only gave us what we asked for, but he crafted a fantastic story to go along with every decision that was made. Now when we sit out here, we look around at each carefully crafted detail with pride. The plans that Aardvark Architecture developed and got approved by the City for us contain more work than we could ultimately afford to build out at the moment, but we now have a master plan for our property fully realized with his architectural expertise. We look forward to building out the rest of the master plan as funds become available. Plus Sean had an amazing team of engineers and builders all ready to help us with our project (almost all named Sean too, so I was glad Aardvark Architecture was the one to manage all the others). What impressed my husband the most was that the Plans seemed to contain unlimited amounts of details that kept on giving -- more often than not, when our builder had a question for Sean, the answer was already in the Plan -- akin to a masterpiece book or movie that invites repeated views. Sean listened carefully to our needs and wants and translated them into a modern yet functional design that we continue to receive rave reviews about. Sean is a kind, thoughtful person who is a joy to work with. He is highly responsive and an excellent communicator. Give Aardvark Architecture a call, you won't regret it!

Sean at Aardvark Architecture was an amazing part of the team for our major remodel and home addition project. We hired Sean after an extensive interview process because he came up with a very compelling design to maximize our properties view of a nearby lake. After going back and forth with Sean on the floor plan layout of the home, we initially decided against Sean's first suggestions of putting our master suite on the lake-side of our property because we were concerned about how much more we'd have to add to our budget. So we submitted a set of plans that got approved quickly but with a rather limited scope of work. After our builder told us that Sean's original concept wouldn't put us over budget as much as we were first concerned about, we approached Sean and asked him if he would revise almost the entire plan set and deal with the city permitting department for us a second time. Sean was happy to do this unexpected work for us and did so quickly and efficiently and got the much improved set of plans approved by the city really quickly. He even talked to the city planner to help us avoid the "subjective design review hearing" we had triggered with our revisions. We're so grateful that Sean showed us quite a few compelling design options to choose from. If you're looking for an architect that will churn out fantastic home designs that will make the most of your property's potential, and will do so for a very fair price, then call Sean at Aardvark Architecture! We're so glad we did.

Work with Sean for a great mix of fun, talent, and efficiency. He was very enjoyable to work with, and came up with fantastic designs – and I’m pretty sure he also saved us over half a year by helping us sail through city bureaucracy. We had a bunch of quirky and specific requests going into my tear-down & rebuild project. Sean discussed our needs with us thoughtfully and then worked with us to design a house that fits our needs and personalities, and is also beautiful. We had a lot of fun working with him on the design process, and we even shared his walkthrough videos with our friends and family throughout the process so they could follow along. We got to see his detailed explanations of each of his early sketches of possible house layouts, then his detailed floorplans, and finally his 3D models. Several times, our friends and family also came back to us with great questions or suggestions, because this video walkthrough format was so easy for them to understand, too. What they didn’t get to see was at least as important – Sean also kept things moving very efficiently behind the scenes. He has a network of engineers, surveyors, arborists, designers, landscape architects, and general contractors that he can refer you to at the right times, so that you don’t have to go find those people on your own (unless you want to; we did a mix of going with his recommendations and asking friends/colleagues for recs – in part because some of his recommended GCs and landscape architects were pricier than we were looking for – and both paths worked great). Sean also gets very involved with city planners and checks in with them often to make sure that city approvals and permits come through as quickly as possible. My neighbors started working with the city planning department seven months before we did for their similar rebuild, but their approvals were a lot slower and more iterative than ours, only coming through slightly before ours did. Sean helped us by being on top of all the city regulations and talking to the planners frequently. That meant we didn’t have to iterate on any city feedback, the city didn’t dawdle in scheduling a public hearing, and the hearing was only eight minutes long before they approved the project! Building/remodeling a new house is inevitably more time-consuming and difficult than you’d like it to be… but Sean makes it as quick, fun, and painless as possible.

It was great working with Sean! We had an extensive remodeling project and Sean was a great partner in the project. He was great at collaborating and sharing ideas. There were quite a few back and forths we had with Sean on ideas and he would always spend time understanding our ideas. What was super helpful was his 3D renditions and he would tweak them as we went back and forth on changes. Made decision making easy for us when we could see the changes in 3D. He also helped coordinate with our contractor on some of the unique design ideas that Sean had developed. Sean is extremely professional and knowledgeable. Definitely a five star recommendation!

Sean provided schematic and space planning services for a new single family home constructed on our existing property. Sean met with us to understand our needs, discussed trade-offs with various styles of development, and developed multiple site layouts for the property. Both myself and my wife work in the A/E/C industry, and we work with designers frequently. I was impressed with Sean's thoroughness, architecture knowledge, and his enthusiasm. Highly recommended.

We hired Sean as the Design Architect for an Accessory Dwelling Unit for the back of our property in San Jose. I’m a licensed architect myself, but I didn’t have the time or knowledge of residential projects to do the design properly. Selecting Aardvark to help was a great decision! Sean was very thorough in his research of what’s permissible on our lot. He was thoughtful in the questions he asked us to understand clearly what we were looking for in the design. He brought a lot of ideas and experience to the table, which was just what we needed. His concepts were beautifully illustrated in the documents he presented to us. We couldn’t be happier with the design, and we can’t wait to see it built!

We're incredibly happy with our decision to choose Aardvark Architecture to design our forever home! Send one email to Sean and you’ll see that he is in a league of his own above all other architects. He’ll ask critical questions, share cat stories, and offer creative solutions to tricky floor plans; no other architect we interviewed came close to his level of brilliance, professionalism, and dedication to our project. We contacted 8 top architect firms after combing through Houzz reviews, interviewed 4 architects, and finally chased after Sean to take on our project. Any architect can draw up a plan, but Sean delivered the maximum potential for our home that we never thought was possible. We were blown away by his level of professionalism even though we already knew he had over a decade of experience designing large scale, multimillion dollar projects (yup, we checked him out on LinkedIn prior to hiring him). It’s incredible to see how Sean’s keen attention to detail tied all our wishlist items into a comprehensive floor plan that was effortlessly beautiful and functional. His ability to instantly articulate our ideas into plans gave us confidence that he could incorporate ANY wishlist items we came up with. There are many good architects, but if you hire Sean, you'll have someone who is ruthlessly dedicated and effectively creative to make your project a guaranteed success. We will always recommend Aardvark Architecture to our friends and family!

We've known Sean for more than two years and are now working together on our second residential project. Sean's attention to detail stands out in everything - not just in his designs but also in his communication. He has a knack for keeping the high-level needs/wants from the owner in mind while outlining all the details needed. That ability is a valuable asset when working on residential projects which tend to be very dynamic. Our second project will be breaking ground in next few months. We've been working together with Sean for last several months - had several in-person, remote meetings, shared online ideabooks/notes, etc. It's been an organized, productive experience. Besides adeptly honing in on our vision with the architectural design, Sean has introduced us to several tradesmen in his network (builders, consultants, vendors, showrooms, etc.). That rolodex makes it easier for us to keep the momentum on all fronts. I look forward to the positive outcome of our project. Sean's contributions and leadership will be key, undoubtedly.

I worked with Sean on some upscaled custom homes in the most prestigious residential communities. As an architect, Sean paid a lot attention to design details. He catches the construction issues pretty thoroughly on site. His design carries unique characteristics as well as practical efficiency. His swift responses to the field questions smooth out the construction process.