who we are:
We aren’t just architects and builders. We’re inventors, problem solvers, and industry leaders.
about f2a
We believe in:
quality over quantity. A small, carefully designed building will outperform, outclass, and outlast one designed for bottom-dollar square footage, every time.
truth to materials. Materials that are carefully chosen and honest about what they are will always be more durable, and feel more luxurious, than cheap materials faking character.
wholistic design. Get to the bottom of the design problem and solve it completely, and the rest will follow. Good design responds intuitively to its context and backs that intuition with practical solutions.
We don’t shy from the technical demands and risk of building something truly innovative and precedent-setting. That’s how we advance the conversation and evolution of construction technology, and steer it toward buildings that actually lead to greater wellbeing for people. We believe the best way to do that is to combine new technology with old-world wisdom: old-world textures, new-world performance.
In practice, this looks like:
a mountain home that achieved precise, luxurious building performance and finish quality, without compromising aesthetics or durability, through our calculated use of unconventional materials (straw bale and site-cut timber).
a head office that won an innovation award for its timber party walls and shear walls, its floor assemblies, and an envelope that integrates solar control, including electrochromic glass.
A lakefront retrofit where many different problems, from bats to frozen pipes to a drafty envelope, were all traced to cheap materials and cut corners, and fixed together in one season at minimal cost.
Origin story
Austin founded f2a with Florian Maurer in 2017. They paired Austin’s innovative spirit and experience at the intersection of natural building and new technology with Florian’s elegantly simple European sensibilities. Both are consummate mountaineers and builders as well as architects, and they developed a practice based on keen observation of the landscape and the use of high-quality materials that relate to their context. Florian later retired to the Italian Alps, and f2a carries his legacy forward through architecture that learns from the land and says more with less.
The deep cut
At its core, f2a really started when the son of two scientists spent his childhood shredding in every way possible, and raiding the scrap-wood pile from the family’s farmhouse renovation to build structures in the woods. Forts, treehouses, skate ramps, bike jumps, and on and on. That kid went on to study languages and sculpture, travelled the world learning about natural building, became an architect, designed and built projects on three continents, and eventually chose the mountains of the Kootenays as the best place in the world to be.
over the years, austin built f2a into a group of like-minded, passionate, and capable people.
This team, innovates like scientists, takes care like craftspeople, designs with an artist’s eye, and operates like a skilled mountaineering crew, because that’s what they are.