The architecture firm Oakland & Imada was formed in 1960 when Claude Oakland left Anshen & Allen to form his own firm, and he asked Kinji Imada to join him in the new venture. They designed homes for Joseph Eichler and Eichler Homes, Inc. as well as other commissions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Claude Oakland was born in Louisiana in 1919. He earned his degree in architecture from Tulane University in New Orleans and then served in the South Seas with the Seabees construction battalion during World War II. While at Camp Parks in Dublin, California, Oakland met fellow Seabee architect Bruce Goff and was persuaded to join his office in Berkeley, California.

In 1950 when Goff closed his Berkeley office, Oakland joined Anshen & Allen in San Francisco. That year Joseph L. Eichler, the first major builder to engage the services of independent architectural firms, came to Anshen & Allen as a client. Soon thereafter, Oakland began serving as the principal designer for Eichler Homes, Inc. Oakland remained principal designer of subdivisions and subdivision houses at Anshen & Allen until 1960 when he left to start his own firm, Claude Oakland & Associates, and took over the Anshen & Allen Eichler account.

Oakland ended up devoting most of his career to Eichler and his various companies, developing along the way a unique kind of tract house that encouraged an informal life style and took advantage of California’s mild climate by permitting freer access to the outdoors. Structural elements such as exposed wood posts, beam framing with tongue and groove decking, and radiant heated slab-on-grade floors became instantly recognizable and integral design elements of the Eichler house. Oakland’s contributions to the development and refinement of these systems were a part of a larger regional design movement, but they are notable for having been developed in the field of mass-produced housing. The association between Oakland and Eichler continued until Eichler’s death in 1974.

Oakland became a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1979 and continued designing and remodeling homes and other buildings with his firm Oakland & Imada until his death in 1989.

Kinji Imada was born in Fresno, CA, in 1927. As a teenager, Imada was interned with his family at Gila River, Arizona during World War II. After the war he spent a year at Harvard before joining the Army, serving as an administrative clerk in General Douglas MacArthur’s office in occupied Japan. After 18 months of service, he returned to Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to study under Walter Gropius.

In 1952, Imada left school for a year to work in the field. He interviewed at Anshen & Allen, which was just starting work on Eichler homes, and Steve Allen helped him get a carpenter's job with a Berkeley contractor. Imada worked the next two summers at Anshen & Allen, meeting Claude Oakland, and many other architects doing modern homes in the Bay Area.

After receiving his Master’s Degree in architecture, Imada spent the next decade working for several of the chief Bay Area designers, including Gardner Dailey, Clark & Beuttler, John Carl Warnecke, and John Funk. In 1959, Imada briefly established his own partnership with Dudley Wynkoop, a colleague from Warnecke's office.

When Claude Oakland founded his architecture firm in 1960 he asked Imada to join him. In addition to their work for Joseph Eichler, the firm took on residential and commercial projects throughout the Bay Area, including an all-concrete home with a ballroom for structural engineer T.Y. Lin and several projects for Kaiser Permanente. The firm became Oakland & Imada in 1977 and persisted until Imada retired in 2000. He passed away in 2005.

Sources: AIA Fellow Nomination form, Oakland & Imada Collection, Environmental Design Archives, University of California, Berkeley. “Oakland and Imada,” Pacific Coast Architecture Database, accessed 9 Feb 2016.

http://pcad.lib.washington.edu/firm/600/

Weinstein, Dave. “SIGNATURE STYLE: Claude Oakland / Modern homes for the masses.” SFGate, 1 Jan 2005, accessed 9 Feb 2016. http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/article/SIGNATURE-STYLE-Claude-Oakland-Modern-homes-2742251.php

Weinstein, Dave. “In Memoriam: Architect Kinji Imada (1927 - 2005).” Eichler Network, accessed 9 Feb 2016. http://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/memoriam-architect-kinji-imada-1927-2005