What Makes Your Heart Sing with Anne Torney

Design Voice Podcast

Anne Torney is a partner at Mithun | Solomon, and leads their San Francisco office. For more than 20 years, she has made affordable multi-family housing and transit-oriented urban infill the focus of her work. For Anne, architecture isn't just about the form or the icon, but the process of making and the narrative of a building, and sharing that with a community to help them envision change. She believes that the two biggest challenges of our time are income inequality and climate change, but design has the power to address both.

In this episode, Anne tells the story of her first community planning meeting, how Mithun has been able to successfully get affordable housing projects built in San Francisco, and shares why you should bring your values to your firm and push for change.

Show Recap:

• How Anne's interest in architecture developed - "In a very backwards way"
• The idea that buildings can be read like books, as critical cultural objects
• Working at David Baker Architects was her first introduction to affordable housing projects
• How attending her first community meeting and her first encounter with design guidelines led Anne to study Urbanism and City Planning at Berkeley
• Wanting to study with Daniel Solomon in grad school, and the approach that architecture and city planning are one continuous discipline
• On the eternal conflict between a city's design guidelines, what architects think is the best for the city, and what the public thinks is the best for the city
• The disagreement between parties is often programmatic rather than design
• Anne talks about the kinds of clients and non-profit developers she works with at Mithun that build affordable housing projects in San Francisco
• Why it's important to have the same values and mission as your clients
• How Anne became a Principal and Managing Partner at Mithun - "Having a nose for what I had a passion for"
• Why Anne finds the firm management aspects of her job very gratifying
• On changing an organization from within versus finding an organization that shares the same values as you - "I love it when people bring their values to work...and say this is what gives me passion, this is what I'm seeing the world needs, and shouldn't we as a firm be doing this?"
• "Be really out there with what want, and the way you think the world should be."
• What Anne loves most about being an Architect - for her it's not just about the form and the icon, but the process of making a building, and taking the narrative of a building and sharing it with a community to help them envision change.
• On how the biggest challenges we currently face are climate change and income inequality, but design has the power to address both.