Thank you to our Jury for the 2024 Preservation Design Awards!

Design Awards Co-Chair

Cathy Garrett, Principal, PGAdesign. Cathy is president of the PGAdesign Landscape Architects a landscape studio based in Oakland celebrating more than 40 years in business. During her career, she has worked on projects that include Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park and Prospect Park in New York City, as well as projects in France, Italy, England, Canada and her native Australia. Award winning projects in California include the Lopez Adobe in San Fernando and the Lovelace Garden in Montecito, also Casa Amesti in Monterey, the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park and the Leland Stanford Mansion in Sacramento. She has made presentations at annual conferences for the American Institute of Architects, California Council for the Promotion of History, California State Parks, and California Preservation Foundation. Cathy has been welcomed as visiting critic for the University of California, Berkeley schools of Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Planning, Cornell University, and the University of New South Wales in Australia. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the Consulting Campus Landscape Architect for UC Berkeley. Cathy was a founding co-chair of the Northern California HALS (Historic American Landscape Survey) Group. She is a past-president of the California Preservation Foundation and until 2018 served on the Historic State Capitol Commission.

Design Awards Co-Chair

Bill Schaeffer, Partner, Cello & Maudru Construction and CPF Vice President of Development. Bill Schaeffer is a partner at Cello & Maudru Construction Company.  Based in Napa, Cello & Maudru specializes in winery, estate home, & hospitality construction building projects throughout the Bay Area.  With the firm since 1996, he has been lucky enough to work on a few notable historic buildings, most recently the Buena Vista Winery Cellar & Caves (CPF 2013 Preservation Technology Award) & the adaptive reuse of the Mackintosh House in Sonoma for Scribe Winery.  With a focus on history, architecture, and historic preservation, he received a bachelor of science in Environmental Design from UC Davis in 1993.  Bill served on the board of Napa County Landmarks from 2002 to 2007.

2024 Design Awards Jury

Ann Harrer has significant experience assessing and repairing existing building materials—particularly concrete building and structural elements—with a specialty in the conservation and preservation of architecturally significant and heritage concrete structures. In addition to her concrete building experience, she has broad expertise in the assessment and repair of brick masonry, terra cotta, cast stone, and wood. Her work includes investigations, analyses, repair design development, and construction observations for structural and nonstructural elements in the built environment.

Ms. Harrer has authored multiple papers and articles and has presented on topics related to the assessment, conservation, and repair of concrete structures and other building materials. She is a past president of the American Concrete Institute, Southern California chapter. She is also the 2019 recipient of the American Concrete Institute Young Member Award for Professional Achievement.

Susan Lassell is a historic preservation planner based in Sacramento who has spent the past 30 years in environmental regulatory compliance. She works at the consulting firm ICF — whose L.A. office is right across the street from the Biltmore! — where she leads a West Coast team of more than 45 architectural historians, preservation planners, and archaeologists. Susan couldn’t be prouder of the work this team performs on cultural resources technical studies, engagement with the preservation community and Native American tribes, and shepherding environmental reviews that give the public an opportunity to influence decision-making about the balance between future development and the protection and enhancement of our shared cultural heritage.

As a Principal at TEF Design, Maryam Rostami‘s practice is rooted in her innate compassion for the well-being of others. Her distinct ability to distill disparate elements of a project into a cohesive vision and process embedded in the unique values of her clients has been essential to successful outcomes and to client partnerships that endure over time. A strong designer and committed advocate for her clients, she brings leadership and enthusiasm for design to her assignments, regardless of scale or scope, balanced by keen management skills and respect for client budgets and schedules. An outspoken agent for equity, she has also been instrumental to integrating actionable measures to advance TEF’s Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) goals and to cultivating a practice culture that prioritizes health and balance.

Maryam’s passion for the development of young people fuels her leadership in education design.  Her exploration of a “trauma informed” architecture that supports healing has been particularly relevant to TEF’s academic clients. Her academic projects include work on the Kresge College Renewal project as well as Employee Housing Master Planning at UC Santa Cruz, the Diego Rivera Theater at City College of San Francisco, Providence High School in Southern California, and Live Oak School, The Dahlia School, and The New School in San Francisco. Maryam’s portfolio also encompasses workplace, retail and multifamily housing, most notably the transformation of Pier 17 into flexible office and event spaces for the Swiss Consulate/Swissnex, as well as a number of affordable housing developments throughout the Bay Area.

Maryam earned her Bachelor of Architecture and Plan II Honors degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for FACT/SF Dance Company and is a member of the AIA and the National Organization of Minority Architects.

Louisa Van Leer founded her eponymous practice in 2015. Her LA based firm is currently engaged
in pushing the edges of single-family residential design and exploring new typologies for multi-unit
housing and density. Her firm also specializes in sensitive rehabilitations and additions to historic
architecture including early and midcentury modern work by Rudolph Schindler.

Her firm has received many awards and honors, including first place in the Subdivision Category of
the 2021 “Low Rise: Housing Ideas for Los Angeles” design competition with her concept titled
“Green Alley Housing,” the 2019 LA Conservancy and California Preservation Foundation, earning
the special Trustees Award for Excellence.

Louisa received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), with a Fellowship from the
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and her B’Arch and BFA from Rhode Island School of
Design (RISD). She holds her architecture licensure in California. She served for over a decade on
the Board of the Highland Park Heritage Trust and is a past board President. She lives with her
family in the historic neighborhood of Highland Park in Northeast LA

Kelly Wong is a Principal Planner at the City & County of San Francisco Planning Department where she currently manages the Code Enforcement Team where she works collaboratively with other City agencies to help property owners and their consultants (e.g. architects, engineers, contractors) bring properties back into compliance with the Planning Code. She also serves as the building materials technical expert on the Preservation Team. Before joining the Planning Department, she worked at the Getty Conservation Institute (GCI) in Los Angeles to work on the Earthen Architecture Initiative, Seismic Retrofitting Project (SRP), which focuses on the seismic upgrade of earthen structures in Peru using advanced technologies coupled with traditional materials and methodologies. Kelly facilitated the production of “model” construction documents for use by the Peruvian Ministry of Culture. Prior to the GCI, Kelly was a Preservation Project Manager at The Presidio Trust (a federal agency) in San Francisco where she led the preservation efforts and seismic rehabilitation of the Officers’ Club, one of the oldest buildings in San Francisco. She began her career at a private architecture firm in San Francisco dedicated to the rehabilitation and conservation of public historic buildings and sites. She has worked on projects including archaeological sites in the US and abroad including Taiwan, Hong Kong, Italy, Bulgaria, Turkey, Peru, Tunisia, and Northern Sudan. Kelly received her undergraduate degree in architecture from UC Berkeley and her master’s in historic preservation with a concentration in architectural conservation from the University of Pennsylvania.

The California Preservation Design Awards is an annual event that recognizes innovators from across the state in architecture, engineering, planning, documentation, and design. 

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