Ming Fung M.Arch. ’80

What do the renovated Hollywood Bowl and Egyptian Theater have in common? Ming Fung M.Arch. ’80. Fung is director of design, principal and cofounder of Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture Associates. She has been instrumental in the execution of all of the firm’s projects including the 50-acre Los Angeles Art Park, two libraries for the Los Angeles Public Library system, The Menlo-Atherton High School Performing Arts Center in northern California and the Sylmar Library.

The award-winning Towell Library, which temporarily replaced UCLA’s Powell Library during its 1992-96 seismic renovation, was a Hodgetts + Fung masterpiece. Towell's eye-popping appearance garnered rave reviews in the press. The New York Times architecture critic Herbert Muschamp wrote, “With its playful air of spontaneity bolted down by innate rigor, the Temporary Powell revives informality as an architectural ideal.”

Hodgetts + Fung has received numerous accolades, including the prestigious Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Chrysler Award for Innovation in Design. More recently, the firm has earned the 2004 Founders Award from the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design.

Fung has earned several individual commendations as well. In 1991, the American Academy in Rome honored her with the NEA Rome Prize Advanced Fellowship. President Clinton also nominated her to serve on the Council for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Fung’s work was exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts in Buenos Aires.

Currently director of graduate programs at the Southern California Institute of Architecture, Fung has also taught at the California State Polytechnic University School of Environmental Design. She and cofounder Craig Hodgetts were invited to Yale University twice as Eero Saarinen visiting professors of architectural design, and also received the Herbert Baumer Distinguished visiting professorship to teach at Ohio State University. Their collaborative monograph, Scenarios and Spaces, is a valued resource and textbook for architecture students.