Chapman Design Associates

We’ve been working with Chapman Design Associates for over a year on a custom residential project in Los Altos. It’s a very challenging job with unique sustainability AND healthy building requirements. We’ve found their team professional, flexible, and very creative and effective at combining these unique owner goals into a lovely and practical home. Their experience and rapport with local permitting officials and knowledge of local code requirements cannot be overvalued. We look forward to supporting more healthy building projects with their design team.

We were remodelling our kitchen and we hired CDA to help us figure out how to make it the kitchen of our dreams. Although it was a smallish project, we felt like an important customer. Walter is an out of the box thinker and a great listener. By asking good questions about how we lived and what we wanted, he came up with some suggestions we would never have thought about – and it turned our kitchen from something really nice to a room that meets the needs of our family exactly. Whether i was building a house from scratch or doing a redesign, i would recommend Walter and his team.

We bought an existing 80 + yr old house near downtown LosAltos, after living there for 4 months, and trying to make the home more livable, we decided to replace the whole house with a whole new house .
The project had several tough constrains including 2 very large heritage oaks, a small lot and an eclectic mix of neighborhood architecture .
We interviewed Walter Chapman along with some local architects, Walter was able to quickly understand what we wanted and gave us a detailed outline of what we were looking at both on a time schedule and our estimated costs for the project
We met weekly with Walter, and developed the plan in small bites which gave us time to understand how the new home would look and feel, At the end of the process Walter was able to deliver detailed plans which allowed us to get our permits with the city
Over the years Walter has developed an excellent team both in his office and also among the engineers and other professionals needed to get the work product delivered .
The project was an education for us, and we learned that a methodical approach was the best way to get this work completed, meeting weekly gave Walter time to communicate with us and come up with a good final plan.

A few years ago we decided to move to Los Altos from Burlingame and fell in love with a beautiful garden. Problem with love is that you’re blind to the other aspects — like the house itself.
That’s where Walter and his team came in — they truly transformed our 1950s ranch into a phenomenal home. The CDA design approach, to sit with clients and immediately visualize design concepts, was amazing. Not the great cathedral in the sky design approach of many architects where it’s their design and you’re an observer.
Walter and team were also able to think outside the box and reuse the bones of a house well. They were responsive, great design team, worked well with the city and at a reasonable cost — far less than build new. Our remodel included a new basement, outdoor covered porch and complete remodel from stud level of ~4000 sqft.