(Sacramento, CA)—San Francisco-based architect, Anne Fougeron, FAIA, who founded her eponymous firm Fougeron Architecture in 1985 has been named the AIA California’s 2022 Maybeck Award recipient. Named for Bernard Ralph Maybeck, the California architect who has influenced designers for over a century, the award recognizes outstanding achievement in architectural design as expressed in a body of work produced by an individual architect over a period of at least 10 years.
“Anne Fougeron is an incredibly impressive architect whose work consistently challenges the profession’s thinking about the role of architecture in our society. Her belief in architecture’s ability to change lives and that everyone deserves access to design’s transformative potential results in thoughtful, unique, and refined solutions,” noted the jury in awarding Fougeron the highest design award the AIA California bestowed an individual architect. “Her diverse body of work embodies her commitment to quality and craft, regardless of the budget. Anne’s holistic and inclusive approach to her practice, the profession and to the architectural community is outstanding.”
In accepting the 2022 Maybeck Award, Fougeron observed, “California is such a unique and special place. When I look at the distinguished list of Maybeck Award recipients – which includes people I feel so fortunate to call mentors and colleagues – I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to forge one’s practice here. This landscape and our communities call upon us to grasp the big picture, aim higher, and always strive for the greater social good – individually and collectively as a profession. It is an honor to receive this award and to continue the legacy it represents.”
Fougeron set the tone of her work through early breakthrough projects such as the 440 House and a clinic for Planned Parenthood which reflected commitments to technical finesse, humanism, and equity that still underpin her practice today. She has noted that the pioneering use of structural glass in a California home and the essential need for secure, yet nurturing nonprofit women’s health clinics warranted the same depth of inquiry.
“She makes it all look easy, but the back stories illuminate the dexterity it takes to achieve,” observed Julie Eizenberg, FAIA, LFRAIA, the co-founding principal of the California firm KoningEizenberg.
Working with a deliberately-kept-small team, Fougeron crafts a diverse body of work united by her vision of humane modernism, architecture that engages the full range of people’s lives and society’s fundamental responsibilities in the language of today.
2019 Maybeck Award recipient Jim Jennings, FAIA, who, as a Bay-area based designer has observed Fougeron’s work for years, noted the facility with which she adapts to “different building types, scales, topographies, and urban conditions. That variety of circumstance brings with it a corresponding range of pressure and expectation to conform to type, which Anne consistently defies.”
Fougeron is also heralded for another layer of practice. “Anne is an award-winning designer as well as a passionate and fearless advocate for women architects,” said 2022 AIA President Rona Rothenberg, FAIA. “She has elevated the profile of women in the field and provided role models for emerging professionals.”
The 2022 Maybeck Award jury was comprised of: Kevin Alter, AIA – Partner, alterstudio; Oonagh Ryan, AIA IIDA – Founding Principal, ora_arch; Claire Conroy – Editor-in-Chief, Residential Design Magazine; and Neal Schwartz, FAIA – Founder + Principal ^A | Schwartz and Architecture.
Fougeron will be honored, in person, at the 2022 Monterey Design Conference, which takes place October 28 – 30 and during a virtual celebration of the 2022 AIA California Design Award winners in December.
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