Anne Chen

Architect, Brainstormer, Business leader, Change Agent, Concerned citizen, Designer, Educator/Teacher, Foodie, Parent, Student

Architects are mental McGyvers and the past 5 years have given me experiences beyond my expectations. I merged my smaller, design forward company into a larger firm that was looking to change by focusing on design. The opportunity to transform the larger firm into one which will have a greater and more expansive positive impact shaping our culture has been compelling and challenging. As we redefine, reposition and rebrand the larger company from a 50 year old service firm to a design focused studio, I am not only a strategist, but a marketing specialist. I am an internal salesperson who is a voice of change. I am an external salesperson who must find ways to articulate our unique and incomparable value to potential clients. As a design leader, shareholder and a member of the board of directors for the company, I craft and make strategic business decisions that define the trajectory of the company. I collaborate with fantastic, ambitious clients to design spaces that will provoke and facilitate thought and education. And I get to work with and mentor my original team of architects and designers, all of whom have remained with me as we continue our transition, joined by new promising talent. I serve on the Board of Trustees of the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, the Advisory Board of Wellness and Integrative Oncology Program at UPMC Cancer Center, and a design review board for the Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. I am a mother to a fourth grade boy.

I am passionate about the public. I love to create spaces that many diverse people can occupy and enjoy. I am an idealist who truly believes that architecture has a part in shaping a culture of equity. I explore building in inventive ways that consider newer technologies but always at the scale of occupancy. I enjoy leveraging risk against reward to create environments that shape a more promising future. I believe that there is an opportunity born of our current condition of political madness to reframe values that recognize that an equal opportunity to advance must be afforded to all.

Architecture is not the business of making buildings. It is the business of shaping behavior. I had the great fortune to meet with Mike Alvidrez, the director of the Skid Row Housing Trust in Los Angeles just before he retired this year. The organization develops permanent supportive quality housing for the homeless. Please look it up. He said that people recognize their value in the spaces that are provided for them and I believe that this is true. When we provide environments that are inspirational, that project value upon the communities that they support, the impact of services will be magnified, potentially exponentially. The space and the language of architecture must promote opportunity for all and shape behavior that will advance a better future.