ZAHID SARDAR is a San Francisco-based writer, editor, and designer who specializes in interiors, architecture and design. He is also the architecture and design editor of the San Francisco Examiner Sunday Magazine.

Sardar is a native of Bombay and has studied art history, English literature and graphic design on two continents (USA and India), while exploring the different ways in which people design homes and interior spaces around the world. He has gone around the globe three times, touching Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and South America. He has won several design awards for his pieces on Bay Area architecture and interiors in the Examiner magazine and has also been on several design juries including the San Francisco AIA Interior architecture design award jury and the 1998 AIA California Council Awards Program.

In November 1998, he published a major book about Bay Area homes. "San Francisco Modern: Interiors, Architecture & Design'' (with photos by J.D. Peterson; Chronicle Books, $40) is a tour of 32 residences. The Houston Chronicle called it "a treat for anyone with modern taste."

He is currently working on a book about designing new spaces for the next century.

In an interview with Chronicle Books, he was asked about his work
Excerpt: Q: How did you get your start writing about architecture and design?

A: I had always written, usually letters to friends or in a diary, while travelling around the world. I described temples in Thailand and high rises in Hong Kong. I saw a "stick" temple outside Oslo in Norway that looked remarkably like an Asian pagoda. An ancient buddhist "cathedral" cave in India was excavated by hand from solid rock and its plan is nearly identical to that of a Romanesque church, complete with ambulatory passages and a nave. The stupa stands where there would have been an altar.

In Sydney, Australia, I observed the opera house that replicates the curve of sailboats that dot the surrounding bay. After moving to the United States, even visiting Bombay, where I was born, became a fascinating architectural journey; international style skyscrapers were being thrown up faster, it seemed, than the time it took to reclaim the land they were built on. The bamboo scaffolding used to build these 30-story structures belied the technological advances that made such buildings possible.

The inherent fallacy in considering modernism as strictly a mechanistic phenomena was startling. But it wasn't until I joined the Examiner that I had the opportunity to develop a sound home and architecture section in the Sunday magazine, and eventually a chance to express my ideas about architecture and design. As art director of the section, I found it difficult to convey visual ideas about modern buildings to other writers, and soon with the encouragement of our publisher, William Randolph Hearst III, and my editors, I began to write about interiors, architecture, and design. That was nearly eight years ago.

Link: Full interview with Chronicle Books

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