Max Jacobson

1941 - 2025

Max Jacobson
05/29/1941 - 08/17/2025
Max Jacobson, prominent Bay Area architect, educator, and author, died on August 17, in his home in Berkeley. His death was announced to his family and friends by his wife and architect-partner, Helen Degenhardt.
Born on May 29, 1941 to Jack and Minna Mae (Ettenson) Jacobson in Houston, Texas, Max moved with his family to Denver, Colorado. There, he spent his childhood and teenage years before entering the University of Colorado, Boulder, where he received a Bachelor's Degree in Science and Engineering in 1963. Soon after, Max moved to Berkeley, California, the place he would come to call home, and in 1964 received his Master's Degree in Chemical Engineering. Full of creative energy, Max found himself restless working as a chemical engineer and began to look for other possibilities. He returned to UC Berkeley to study architecture and in 1973, he became the first student to be awarded a PhD by the new College of Environmental Design. His doctoral thesis, under Professor Christopher Alexander, explored methods for including a building's ultimate users in the design process. Impressed with this work, Alexander invited Max to join his Berkeley office, the Center for Environmental Structure. With Alexander and others, Max went on to co-author A Pattern Language, Towns, Buildings, Construction (Oxford University Press, 1977). A landmark text, the book became one of the most influential and widely read architecture books of the late twentieth century.
As the book was being completed, Max with then-partner Meg Courtney moved to a few acres of land in Lafayette, California, where they raised chickens, goats and vegetables. During this time, his daughter, Taylor, was born.
At the Center of Environmental Structure, Max met Murray Silverstein, and in 1975 the two formed the Berkeley firm, Jacobson/Silverstein Architects, where with the addition of partners Barbara Winslow and Helen Degenhardt, Max remained active for over 40 years. Max designed with intensity and great care, always searching for ways to create a genuine relationship - to find the fundamental order - between a building, its site, and its eventual users. Under his guidance, hundreds of projects were built, including the award-winning Mudd's Restaurant in San Ramon, Spirit Rock Meditation Hall in Woodacre, and the Scheuttge Residence in Berkeley. Max also spent many summers vacationing with family and friends at his cabin on Stuart Island in the San Juans. They cut wood, cooked over an open fire, read books, and listened for the blows of whales. There, Max and Helen designed the Burget/Skartvedt Residence.
Throughout his years of practice, Max continued to write and teach. He taught architecture at UC Berkeley and Diablo Valley College, where he was an encouraging and inspiring mentor to many students. With his partners at JSW/D Architects, he co-authored The Good House, and Patterns of Home, both beautifully conceived, written, and illustrated works that professionals and lay readers alike enjoyed. His seminal book, Invitation to Architecture (with Shelley Brock) grew directly out of his experience teaching introductory architecture classes to generations of students. Here too he was relentlessly energetic and creative. When his publisher could not offer a budget for photography, Max, an accomplished sketch artist, illustrated the book with all his own drawings.
Max was also a talented pianist, and placed an upright piano at the center of JSW/D's studio, where from time to time throughout the day he would play: Gershwin, Mozart, the Beatles.... Citing one of his heroes, Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, Max would remind his colleagues, that "architecture is frozen music."
Throughout his life, Max retained a disarming curiosity and imagination. Nearing retirement, he re-discovered his childhood passion for building and flying model airplanes, and became an avid "pilot." An office-mate recalls him leaving work early one day, excitedly announcing, "The wind's died down, let's go fly!"
Max is survived by his wife, Helen Degenhardt, his daughter Taylor (and her husband John) in Los Angeles, his brother Mark (and his wife Maryann) in Richmond, and his grandson Mateo Jacobson Knuth.