In Praise of Pragmatism: Fisher Friedman Associates

In 1951, Rodney Friedman entered the School of Architecture at the University of California at Berkeley, where he studied under such noted architects as Erich Mendelsohn, William Wurster, Joseph Esherick, Paul Rudolph, and Charles Eames. Since the inception of Fisher Friedman Associates, the firm has been widely recognized as a national leader in residential design. Such recognition, comprising more than 250 awards for design and planning, and inclusion in numerous books and publications, attests to the firm's success in finding imaginative solutions to the problems of each individual project. During the 1960's and 1970's, the work of the firm was almost completely residential in scope, but since the early 80's it has included academic buildings, student housing, office developments, civic facilities, adaptive re-use, and large-scale urban planning.