January 15, 2019

Mithun merges with California design firm

Photo by Kelli Radwanski [enlarge]

The leadership team (from the left) includes Dave Goldberg, Hsinming Fung, Craig Hodgetts, Anne Torney and Brendan Connolly.

Seattle architecture firm Mithun merged with Hodgetts + Fung, an award-winning Culver City, California firm known for designing performing arts spaces, including the new Hollywood Bowl.

Terms were not released.

Craig Hodgetts and Hsinming “Ming” Fung are now partners at Mithun. The eight person staff will continue to work out of a renovated warehouse in Culver City, joined by Mithun's Los Angeles staff. The office will be called Mithun|Hodgetts + Fung.

In a press release, Mithun said the merger capitalizes on Southern California's strong institutional and commercial real estate growth.

The combined firm will do urban mixed-use, higher education, civic, cultural and corporate projects.

Hodgetts said, “Both our firms take a deeper look into architecture and ask: How does this project benefit the community as a whole? Cities today are in great need of this kind of holistic thinking, and we are excited to bring this approach to groundbreaking projects with our expanded team.”

Hodgetts + Fung has won over 40 design awards in its 35 years. It also does exhibit design, mixed-use, education and civic projects. Recent work includes the 260,000 square-foot Robertson Lane, a mixed-use complex in West Hollywood; the Sunset and La Cienega retail/commercial complex in Los Angeles; and adaptive re-use of the 1,200-seat Robert Frost Auditorium in Culver City.

Mithun was founded in 1949, and was recently ranked 12th among U.S. architecture firms by Architect Magazine. Clients include Google, Mercy Housing, Security Properties and UC San Diego.

With a staff of 178 people, Mithun provides architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning and interior design. It also has an office in San Francisco.

Southern California work includes the 1,700-bed UCLA Lot 15 Residence Halls, the 2,200-bed UCLA Southwest Campus Apartments and UC Irvine Middle Earth, a mixed-use complex.

Hodgetts will wind down a teaching role at UCLA where he led the Architecture and Urban Design Suprastudio, including a design partnership advancing Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept.

Fung has twice held the Eero Saarinen Chair at Yale University among other academic chairs. In recent years she was awarded an AIA Los Angeles Gold Medal Award, served as Presidential Appointee to the National Endowment for the Arts Council, and won the National Endowment for the Arts Rome Prize Advance Fellowship.