What Makes Your Heart Sing with Anne Torney

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.