Cheng Design is a team of creative individuals who specialize in interior and exterior design and construction. The company provides art and design services under the supervision of award-winning designer Fu-Tung Cheng, emphasizing personal service and quality for both residential and commercial projects.Founded as a construction firm in 1978 by Fu-Tung Cheng and incorporated as Cheng Design nine years later, the Berkeley, California company began with small residential remodeling contracts in the Berkeley-Oakland area, building a reputation for innovative design in contemporary kitchens and baths. Cheng Design has since evolved to a full service residential and commercial design company and has expanded with a separate products division. In 1990, Cheng Design relocated its offices and studio to the present location in West Berkeley. The staff includes architects, designers, and a construction and fabrication crew. Their design and consultation process provides a close working relationship with each hands-on craftsperson, whose creative talents and skills contribute to the inclusion of art in building. In addition, Cheng Products, founded in 1999, now distributes a line of high-end stainless steel kitchen hoods, and a line of modular concrete countertops through over thirty independent showrooms nationwide. Cheng Design has reinvented the traditional kitchen and bathroom by utilizing the medium of concrete as a sculptural element for counters and drainboards, incorporating the aesthetics of water and stone. Carvings and inscriptions, inlays and artifacts, objets trouvés, are worked into colored plaster and concrete while it is still curing, integrating the spontaneous act of drawing with the construction of floor and wall surfaces.Recipient in 1998 of a Stellar Award in the first American Society of Interior Designers (ASID)/Sunset Magazine Design West Awards for a house remodel, Cheng Design is known internationally for its innovative stylings in concrete, produced in the Berkeley workshop. Cheng's entry of a Mill Valley remodel won a Second Place award in the 1997 bi-annual Sub-Zero Company Kitchen Design Contest. For the 1995 Sub-Zero contest, Cheng Design received a First Place award of $10,000 for a striking remodel in a Victorian home in the Pacific Heights district of San Francisco. The winning designs use concrete, plaster, soft-finished stainless steel and natural wood to achieve a beautiful harmonious look.The same level of hands-on detail and artistic perspective has been applied to Cheng Design's custom homes, described as “modern, tactile, and warm.†Cheng's first custom home, completed in 1993, was published in House Beautiful and in Jim Tolpin's The New Family Home, Taunton Press, 2000. The second home, finished in 1995, was published in Global Architecture (GA Houses #54). Completed in 1996, the third custom home was selected as one of Architectural Record's Record Houses and won awards from the Sunset Magazine/AIA Western Home Awards, the Metal Construction Association Merit Awards, and the Metal Architecture Design Awards. As construction continues on the company's fifth custom home, in Puerto Rico, Fu-Tung Cheng continues to emphasize homebuilding as a medium of refining culture, art, and play.
