Fu Wilmers Design | Architecture + Urbanism was founded by Jonie Fu and Fred Wilmers in 2015 to practice architecture and urban design. Creating successful places and buildings that are memorable and add value to a community are the key principles embodied in our mission.

Every project begins with an understanding of place, people, and purpose. Through architecture, urban design, and landscape, we create environments that foster connection, strengthen identity, enrich everyday life, and deepen connections between people and their surroundings.

Our studio, based in New York City, is comprised of architects, project managers, landscape architects, and designers. We immerse ourselves in collaborative efforts with clients, team members, and specialty consultants. Creativity, enthusiasm, passion and teamwork define our work ethic.  

How We Work

Our approach to design and planning is grounded in analytical rigor, technical excellence and management reliability while elevated by bold aspirations and innovative ideas. We integrate architecture, landscape, and infrastructure with sustainable value and are always mindful to embrace existing character. 

Our work is deeply rooted in the place and is subtly integrated into the environment and surrounding neighborhoods. We often team with other professionals ranging from economics, to transportation, to community outreach facilitators. Collaboration and working closely with our clients have delivered our best work time and again.

What We Do

We provide design and planning services for public institutions, government, city, and municipal agencies, private developers, public and private universities, and healthcare campuses. Our projects are transformational efforts in their respective cities; creating new neighborhoods, improving real estate value, and becoming exemplary places.

We offer professional services in the following areas:

  • Architecture

  • Urban Design

  • Master Planning

  • Healthcare Planning

  • Research Facilities

  • Landscape Architecture

  • Feasibility Analysis

  • Site Selection

  • Development and Density Studies

  • Community Outreach

 

Partners

Jonie Fu

Jonie Fu has provided architecture and urban design leadership for award-winning projects over the last thirty years. Guided by the belief that every city is unique and every place distinctive, her work focuses on synthesizing the physical design constraints of a site with its new objectives, emphasizing above all the relationship between the built and natural environments and the users.

The civic spaces and the communities she has developed are designed to be both transformational and memorable. Her extensive experience in urban design includes strategic planning, framework plans, master plans, development strategies, public realm plans. Working with public and private sector clients, she has imagined new neighborhoods, and collaborated with higher education institution to update and redefine modern spaces for learning. Jonie is particularly passionate about helping cities and towns navigate infrastructural and development challenges, downtown viability, feasibility and long-term public realm strategies.

Prior to founding the firm, Jonie was a Principal and Director of Urban Design at AECOM, where she provided comprehensive design services for large-scale campuses and global communities. Her previous tenure at renowned architectural firms in New York City honed her skills in delivering sustainable, high-impact design solutions. She now brings this extensive experience directly to her own studio.

Jonie received a Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Columbia University and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California. She was honored with the Tommy Award for outstanding achievement by the USC Alumni Club of New York. She served on the Alumni Board at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), serving as President from 2014 to 2016.

Fred Wilmers has led the planning, design, and construction of some of New York area’s most architecturally complex and prominent buildings. Fred is known for his dexterity in leading large teams of designers and sub-consultants through the complicated building process from conceptualization through construction and his ability to deliver creative solutions to challenges and issues time and again.

His most recent academic research project was a new research laboratory building at the Rockefeller University in a setting where the building and its related open space extends over the Franklin Roosevelt Drive on the East River in New York City. He was Project Director for the transformation of the Old College Library into the new Benard and Ann Spitzer School of Architecture at CUNY City College. Working with both State agencies and the NYC Department of Design and Construction, Fred led the design and construction of the Bronx Hall of Justice from conception to completion.

Fred’s other project experience includes the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Janelia Farm Research Campus, Princeton University Stadium, Columbia University Presbyterian Medical Center, and Jazz at Lincoln Center, all extraordinarily visionary and technically challenging, and many are published in professional and trade joules and have won multiple awards.

Fred received a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Southern California. Prior to founding Fu Wilmers, Fred was a Director at Rafael Viñoly Architects and previously worked on large-scale and mixed-use buildings in New York and London.