Today we’d like to introduce you to Anthony Poon.
Hi Anthony, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I created my first large scale work at age five. As my mother prepared a meal in the kitchen, I grabbed my crayons and drew a landscape mural on the large wall that went up our staircase. This ambitious work from a young eager artist was completed in 20 minutes. My parents did not know whether to scold me for vandalism or praise me for an impressive burst of creativity.
I graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture, and a secondary emphasis in music. After graduation, I relocated to New York City, living in Chelsea—then a mostly abandoned part of town, now one of the centers of the universe. Life doesn’t offer us very many stark choices. But decades ago, one very late night in my cramped studio apartment, I faced such a choice. I clenched two graduate school applications: one for The Juilliard School of Music, and the other for Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. I had to decide which of my passions would eventually become my vocation: music vs. architecture.
Music was my first passion. Since age 6, my goal was to be a world-class concert pianist. I spent years and years of practicing piano, composing music, studying composers, and performing recitals. When I put pen to paper, it was often to mark notes, chords, melodies, and harmonies. I wanted to play for the world.
I was also one of those kids drawn to Legos. I created cars, planes, robots, and of course, buildings. As I grew older, my visions for physical structures were captured in pencil, in paint, clay, cardboard, in any form of material I could get my hands on. I created dreams and sculpted worlds of peace and progress. Of intention. I dreamed of places for people to live, to grow, to fall in love, and to find meaning in their existence. I wanted to shape the world.
On that night in 1987, I had to choose.
I pondered how many famous pianists I could name, I could only come up with a short list: Rubenstein, Horowitz, Serkin, and just a few more. The odds of my making that short list seemed slim. Yet there are hundreds of successful architects in every city. I figured that I could be a practicing architect and still practice music. But not the other way around. I could not be a concert pianist and also lead an architecture firm.
And so I chose architecture, and I have designed places where people live, grow, connect, and flourish. Architecture is both the blank canvas that provides for one’s life imprint, as well as the vessel that holds one’s life.
I still play the piano nearly every day, whether it is a small bit of Brahms and Bach, or Rodgers and Hammerstein for my daughters to sing and dance. My choice of one passion didn’t negate the other. Indeed, the passion not chosen continues to inform the other.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The road has certainly not been smooth. As an architect, author, artist, and musician—as an individual madly driven to create—the road is more akin to a roller coaster then that of a smoothly paved freeway. Besides the obvious struggles to make money and sustain an authentic life of artistry, challenges also come from finding meaning and essence in the work, being recognized for my pursuits, wondering if I am truly talented, competition in the space, and not just finding one’s voice, but one’s audience.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My Los Angeles architecture studio, Poon Design Inc., serves national and international clients in residential, commercial, educational, and religious projects. With over 300 completed buildings, Our eclectic body of architecture has received 50 national and regional honors, and has been chronicled in over 100 publications.
At Poon Design, we combine discipline and improvisation to create transformative architecture and reimagine social engagement. We assert that good design belongs to everyone. Through a process that blends rigor, artistry, and optimism, the work of Poon Design elevates quality of life.
One of my greatest achievements took place at the 2022 national AIA convention in Chicago, where I was admitted into the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects, with President Obama as keynote speaker. The FAIA medal represents “exceptional contributions to architecture and society nationally”—an honor bestowed on less than 3% of the national industry.
As an author, my published books, essays, and articles provide me a platform to capture the artistic spirit, to promote nobility in the creative act of writing. Of all my writings, I am most proud of my debut 2022 novel, Death by Design at Alcatraz, an examination of ego and arrogance. The architectural thriller explores redemption within the creative process. Having recently adapted my story to a screenplay, Scriptapalooza 2025 recently honored my work in their Top 30 best scripts out of over 4,000 international projects.
If we knew you growing up, how would we have described you?
Some would call me a busy-body. I have many interests, hobbies, and fields of pursuit. I paint, collage and sculpt. I play the piano and once in a while compose music. I write essays and publish here and there. I even scrapbook, garden, tie dye, and make furniture.
For a recent podcast, the interviewer asked me, “Of your various activities, what creative pursuit do you like best?” Akin to the challenges of identifying one’s favorite rock band or flavor of ice cream, there is no reasonable answer. Do I like playing a Beethoven piano sonata more than writing a position article on the design industry? Do I enjoy working on a large mixed-media art piece more than designing a Buddhist temple?
I don’t see any such exercises as separate, or in any way independent from each other. Artistic endeavors are not discrete. All my investigations, experiments, tests, and yes, failures too, fall under the shelter of a single umbrella, a simultaneous effort—that of a creative voyage with no starting point and excitingly, no end in sight.
When one plant species pollinates another, the cross pollination creates new varieties of plant life. So too should all forms of artistic study and all mediums of imagination and expression. Music, painting, writing, architecture, and so on. For me, it is all one artistic gesture—interconnected, intertwined, inseparable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.poondesign.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anthonypoondesign/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthony.poon.714/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-poon-faia-leed-52159a1/
- Other: https://www.anthonypoon.com
Image Credits
Mikel Healey, David Blank, Hunter Kerhart, Mark Ballogg, Anthony Poon, Grant Bozigian
