Anne Fougeron
Architect
Anne Fougeron received her Master’s degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1980. Following a summer of study at ILAUD in Urbino, Italy, she decided to return to the Bay Area to explore career possibilities. She spent three years in the office of Dan Solomon and Associates working as a Project Architect on mixed-use housing developments and urban planning studies and a year in San Jose’s Redevelopment Agency coordinating and supervising the redevelopment effort for the city’s downtown area.
In 1986 she opened her own office in San Francisco. Since then, she has built up her practice with projects for institutional and private clients, much of it in the field of residential design. Attracting clients who honor her ideas has been one of her most important goals for, as she puts it, “Design is the value-added quality I bring to a project.” If her refusal to compromise her designs has put some clients off, Fougeron believes standing her ground has given her the satisfaction of seeing her clients’ expressions of doubt replaced with delight when the buildings are completed.
Fougeron has steered the work of her firm on a Modernist course emphasizing clarity of structural expression, the use of natural light to mold space, and the selection of materials for the tactile and visual qualities that will bring tonal balance to the completed work. A 2005 award-winning vacation house in Big Sur embodies these design principles. In contrast to the backdrop of rolling California hills, the 2,500 square foot house is composed of cubistic elements expressed in plan. The forms are made of warm and cool materials, and the interior is lit by generous glazed areas. All four corners of the house are glazed all the way to the ceiling allowing for views of the sky and towards the open end of the canyon, minimizing the presence of the tall and dark canyon walls. The steep walls of the canyon dominate the wooded site next to a creek. The house holds its own in this tall and cavernous place neither dominating nor being dwarfed by it. The main volume of the house runs parallel to the canyon with a butterfly roof and glass corners that reach out to the sky and the light at the open ends. The thin roof sits delicately above a clerestory band of extruded glass connecting to the roof structure with thin rods, invisible on the exterior. At the corners of the house, two story clear windows frame the views of the redwoods and the sky at the ridge of the canyon. This volume is clad in standing seam copper.
Anne’s interest in merging the design and production processes has led her to create cross-disciplinary teams with local craftsmen for each project. For example, her fifteen-year association with Dennis Luedeman has resulted in the integration of steel detailing and structure in all her project. They work collaboratively now on most of the office’s projects. Her association with the structural team of Endres-Ware is also essential to the process: from conception to construction they collaborate to make the most interesting visually dynamic and yet seismically sound structures. Within her office, staff work on projects from beginning to end allowing them to learn both how to design conceptually how to detail buildings and how to have them built
Among her most satisfying work, Fougeron counts her association with Planned Parenthood, which began in the mid-1990s. From the beginning challenges arose from the complex programmatic, political, and emotional issues facing the organization along with the strict budgets within which the design had to be carried out. An example is the two-phase remodel of MacArthur Clinic started in 1996 and the second phase completed in 2003. This project was a winner of several awards, and entailed the complete remodel of a 7,000 square foot clinic in Oakland. The goal was to create an atmosphere that would bolster staff morale and facilitate an orderly work process.
Having established a practice that can execute a variety of projects large and small, Fougeron has no desire to increase the size of her 10-person office to facilitate the pursuit of large-scale work. She feels that design loses its focus when work is based on size. In such circumstances, she says, architects disregard a project’s short-comings and pursue the next job in the hope that it will be bigger and therefore better.
The main obstacle Anne has experienced in her career is being a woman-owned firm in a male profession, despite the contributions of many women practitioners. “Women made up half of my class at UC Berkeley,” she observed, “but most of them have vanished from the architectural scene.” When work was scarce, she was advised to get a male associate. Even today, as women are entering the field in growing numbers, she finds they are under-represented on the speakers’ platforms of professional conferences.
Increasing recognition in the press has brought Fougeron the kind of satisfaction that comes from earning an enviable place in her profession. Although she is personally involved in the design of each project from inception through occupancy, she admits to being particularly thrilled by seeing it published.
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