Laura Natkins, Architect

Laura Natkins helped me design a 800 square foot ADU with over 300 square feet of loft space. It maximized the hill and over-the-bay views, while avoiding direct window-to-window contact with the main house. She suggested great features, and was graceful in working in the features I wanted. It was a sound collaborative experience that resulted in a beautiful design.

Laura did an excellent job both with the design of our major remodel/addition, and with shepherding the project through the permitting process. She listened to all of our ideas and put them together into a cohesive and practical layout, and then made changes when we realized that the construction costs were going to exceed our budget. She's friendly, professional, and overall a pleasure to work with!

My husband and I hired Laura Natkins as our architect to design a substantial addition to our living room and remodel the kitchen of our Victorian house in Berkeley, California. The result was a great open space, integrating our new living room, our dining area and our remodeled kitchen. We love it and we loved our ongoing work with Laura on the design and implementation of this project. Laura helped us create a wonderful open-plan living space that is both architecturally compatible with our 1894 Victorian house and completely contemporary. We delight in the wonderful hipped roof with exposed beams, the skylights, the many windows and glass door opening into the garden. We are very happy with the beautiful remodeled kitchen. We can cook at our new stove while talking with family and friends in the dining and living room areas. Working with Laura has been a joy, She communicates excellently, listens carefully, and skillfully draws out the ideas you didn't even know you had. She responds quickly to emails, texts and calls and is always attentive and gracious. She is timely in delivering updated designs and the designs themselves are exquisitely done. Laura worked beautifully with Jason McDermott, our superb contractor who did a remarkable job in executing Laura's plans. All in all, we give Laura Natkins our highest recommendation.

We hired Laura to help design a second story addition to our house. She really listened to what we wanted and took our ideas and made them a reality. She was super easy to work with and always came up with a few options for us to choose from during the design phase until we settled on the final plans.

For a project to remodel several rooms in our 1930s house and replace our crumbling garage with a studio apartment, we looked for an architect who could do it all. We wanted the remodel and the addition to have a modern feel but blend perfectly with the existing building--all on a limited budget. And we wanted guidance throughout. We approached Laura Natkins because we saw in photos and comments from previous clients that she had achieved impressive results on a range of projects, some modest and some grand. As we worked with her on our own job, it was apparent from start to finish that hiring her was a great decision. She was as skilled at eliciting our ideas and translating them into a workable plan as she was on every other aspect of the project, from creating the technical renderings and instructions to dealing with permits and other bureaucratic matters, troubleshooting, and helping us make decisions along the way. Her aesthetic sense, her knowledge and experience, and her ability to work effectively with the contractor and other folks at the job site, vendors, and bureaucrats (not to mention nervous clients) were exceptional. We are happy with our new abode and heartily recommend Laura.

My husband and I want to highly recommend Laura Natkins. Now that we have worked with her, we wouldn't contemplate going with anyone else! We have now used her on two different projects - a full kitchen remodel and a 900 square foot addition to our house. She has an amazing eye for what would work, and how to maximize the use of space in an area. For the kitchen remodel, she recommended a window seat. At first, we were apprehensive about the additional costs but now it is the highlight of the kitchen and we love it! For the more extensive remodel, she created a design which was seamless in the flow with our existing house and provided optimum utility for our family. We gave her full artistic rein over paint colors, light fixtures, tiles, and other fixtures since her tastes are impeccable. Her eye for interior design and architecture made our lives easier since she normally limited our choices to two options - and we generally loved her choices. She also created a mudroom for us which is the envy of our friends and neighbors! In addition to her artistic/technical skills, Laura is a pleasure to work with and is very responsive. We have already passed on her name to our friends and neighbors since we know that they will also have a similar experience working with her.

Laura designed our 1,000 sq. ft. addition in Kensington, CA. The addition includes a new breakfast room upstairs and a new downstairs level consisting of two bedrooms, a family room, a full bath, a laundry room, and a music room. We have a small lot - 2500 sq. ft. - and we initially turned to Laura with the challenge of maximizing living space with minimal impact to the original footprint of the house and it's overall scale. We wanted an integrated feel to the addition - modern, but not out of sync with the original 1924 bungalow. Laura did fantastic work exploring various ideas big and small. She iterated on the layout with an eye toward creating the best flow through the new space, maximizing light, and making a meaningful connection between the two levels. Our local municipal advisory council, the body that reviews all plans as a required first step in the submission process, approved Laura's design quickly and remarked on how effectively she worked within the constraints of our lot size as well as all of the local variances. Laura truly partnered with us and guided us throughout planning and construction, and we appreciate her interactive style. We consider ourselves to be "involved" clients: we constantly asked for options and ideas as we refined our budget and priorities along the way. Laura embraced this process. She was thoughtful and responsive, and always found a way to help us arrive at an answer. We completed construction in July 2015 and we see each conversation with Laura and each decision in the details of the finished space. We couldn't be happier with the process and the result.

We recently hired architect Laura Natkins for a home remodel.Our experience working with her was exceptional. She is an inspiring designer who maintains an equal balance between style and practicality. She is a wonderful guide through the often overwhelming and challenging world of a remodel. Laura enjoys working with her clients and navigating them through the design discovery process. Following her direction, we found just the right color, light or finish for each of our rooms. She’s confident in her ability to create beauty and warmth-- something of quality regardless of budget constraint. We were extremely happy with Laura’s services. She was instrumental in making our remodel a success and we highly recommend her for any design needs you may be considering. Janet H. Oakland, CA