July 14, 2025
As we approach the one-year anniversary of the passing of our co-founder and leader, Chiu Lin Tse-Chan, we want to take a moment to honor Chiu Lin and recognize her contributions to the field of Architecture.
Born under communist rule in Zhanjiang, China in 1936, Chiu Lin and her family were forced to separate and flee. Chiu Lin completed primary school in Guangzhou, where she met her future husband, Hing Wan Tse. She attended secondary school in Beijing and competed on a national level on the ping pong team. Chiu Lin attended university in Taiyuan, China, but moved with her husband to Hong Kong to reunite with her mother before she was able to complete her degree. Chiu Lin’s architectural career began in Hong Kong, working at her friend’s father’s firm. In 1968, despite speaking very little English, Chiu Lin made the bold decision to move to the United States and reunite with her younger brother, Chi Kin, a then student at Brown University. Chiu Lin’s husband would join her shortly thereafter in San Francisco, where they established their permanent residence and began to build their life together.
In 1971, Chiu Lin began working at Anshen & Allen Architects in San Francisco. It was here that she would meet future business partner, David G. Fong, who was also starting out his career. Unlike many of her peers, Chiu Lin was a self-taught practitioner with no formal education in architecture. Chiu Lin never allowed this obstacle to stand in her way, however, and she distinguished herself through meticulous work and a tireless work ethic. Chiu Lin’s talent and leadership skills were recognized at the firm, where she became a project manager, and eventually a principal at a time when few women, let alone minority women, held leadership roles in the field.
Chiu Lin’s career reached a turning point when she was offered a 20% ownership stake of Anshen & Allen. Unfulfilled by the culture and practices of the firm, she ultimately decided to forgo the offer and leave the company with the ambition of starting her own practice. In the Spring of 1982, Chiu Lin passed the ARE and became a licensed architect in the state of California. In August of the same year, she convinced former colleague David Fong (who had since moved on to a position at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) to interview with her for a project at San Francisco International Airport (SFIA). A sizable project with an area of approximately 1 million square feet and construction cost of around $150 million, David and Chiu Lin believed their chances of being selected for the project to be slim. And pulling it off would be a massive feat for a brand new firm comprised of just two individuals. To their great surprise, David and Chiu Lin were awarded the project, and thus established Fong & Chan Architects (FCA).
The SFIA project scope included the master planning, programming, and design of the South Terminal (now Terminal One) and its Passenger Boarding Areas A, B and C, and the underground connections from the Terminal to the Central Parking Garage. David and Chiu Lin carried out this work largely as a two-person team, working day and night for three months to complete the project at office space provided by the airport on site.
Following the successful completion of the project at SFIA, FCA opened their first office in Burlingame and built out a small team. They completed dozens of projects in the Bay Area and beyond and became well known for their rigorous commitment to excellence, producing the most accurate and well-coordinated construction documents in the profession. Early adopters of computer aided design, Chiu Lin and David saw the promise that new technology would bring to the field. Throughout her career, Chiu Lin continued to embrace changing technology and could be found working in the latest version of Revit up until her final days at FCA.
Under David and Chiu Lin’s leadership, FCA became known for designing healthcare facilities and developed a focus on complex, large scale and heavy infrastructure projects. The firm completed many noteworthy projects in the Bay Area, including the M.H. de Young Museum, Washington Hospital in Fremont, Stanford University Center for Clinical Sciences Research, and Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital & Trauma Center.
Over the course of her career, Chiu Lin remained closely involved with all projects that the firm handled. She regularly worked one-on-one with junior designers to train them in all aspects of planning and construction documentation. Her thorough quality control methodologies helped lead the firm to great success and earned the praise and loyalty of dozens of repeat clients. In 2001, Chiu Lin was recognized as a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA), one of the highest honors awarded by the AIA. David and Chiu Lin have mentored students from UC Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design on architectural practice and also lectured on the practice methodologies and techniques that FCA employs to ensure successful delivery of projects. Chiu Lin and David were recently recognized by the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Society of Architectural Historians in Washington D.C. for their career achievements as Asian American architects.
For many of us, Chiu Lin was a larger than life figure; she was a force of nature, her drive and commitment to her practice unparalleled. One year on, we still feel the impact of her loss, both within our office and in the architecture community at large. Our hope is to carry on her legacy by upholding the guiding principles established by Chiu Lin and David at the firm’s inception:
Create excellent architecture
Serve the clients well
Give back to the community
Elevate the status of architects in society
