nick haner

I spent my childhood in the sixties under the redwood trees in the Cascade Canyon of Mill Valley, in Marin County, California. I caught crawfish in the neighborhood creek. I was lucky to be surrounded by environmentally conscious people and live in a beautiful place. I often spent the summers in Albuquerque, New Mexico, watching the construction of my grandfather’s adobe homes. He was Leon Watson and he taught my mother, Jane Robbins, to be the best draftsman I’ve ever known. I learned how to pack mud into adobe forms, strip wallpaper off walls, swing a hammer, pour resin and how to draft with a pencil. I had good teachers who taught me to be fearless in using new materials.

I attended four years at Chico State University with an emphasis in Graphic Design and have been finishing my degree these past two years by taking a whopping amount of math in order to graduate before my two daughters.

In the seventies I met a group of talented artists and through them started to work in display in Macy's San Francisco Union Square store, alongside fifteen extremely talented men who taught me many skills I use today. We had a carpentry shop, sculpture studio and spray booths. From working in so many diverse materials, I attracted the attention of hotelier Burton Goldberg, who brought me to Coconut Grove, Florida, to design 130 rooms in the Mutiny Hotel. Each room was designed around a different theme or country. The project took three years to complete.

After the Mutiny I went on to design a long line of nightclubs and restaurants in South Florida. At the same time Carlos Castro and I opened Antares Furniture, a gallery of one-of-a-kind furnishings made from recycled furniture. We managed the reawakening of over 6000 pieces over twelve years, with our kids running in and out between the chair legs. Over 6o pieces of our furniture were used in the sets of Miami Vice, filmed in Miami.

In 1998 I came back to the San Francisco Bay Area, to design Elka’s Restaurant on Post Street in SF. The following years I became active in producing green residential projects, lecturing for Build it Green, and supported the implementation of a green points building system in San Rafael, my local town. My work on residential interiors expanded as well as projects in retail desi