Cam Cooper
ROLE
Principal + Founder, CA Licensed Architect
LOCATION
San Francisco, CA
Cam brings more than twenty years of precision and craft, from the California Academy of Sciences to SFJAZZ Center, to the intimacy of small studio practice.
BACKGROUND
Raised in Gainesville, Florida, Cameron "Cam" Cooper discovered an early passion for building while working summer construction jobs and making DIY skateboard ramps. He learned technical drawing skills in high school drafting courses and then explored the spatial & conceptual aspects of architecture while earning a Bachelor of Design at the University of Florida. He later completed a Master of Architecture at UT Austin with Honors, focusing on sustainable design.
A formative eight-month internship at the Renzo Piano Building Workshop in Genoa, Italy, allowed Cam to work on the early design of San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences. He then spent six years working with the team in San Francisco to see the project through to its 2008 completion. Next, he joined Mark Cavagnero Associates to help design and build the SFJAZZ Center, which opened in 2012. Seeking smaller-scale projects and a deeper focus on craft, Cam spent the next 12 years working as a Project Architect at Lundberg Design, a unique studio and fabrication shop. His projects included custom homes, restaurants, and commercial spaces. In 2025, he worked with Faulkner Architects on the deisgn of a custom residence in Truckee, CA.
In 2026, Cam founded CooperStudio to focus on the craft of residential design, remodels, hospitality, and commercial projects. He is a licensed architect in California.
(License #C-37894).
ETHOS
Architectural design is problem-solving with great taste. Every project starts with a puzzle, and the goal is to solve it beautifully.
Architecture is a complex engagement between people and the things that surround them. The task is to make places and buildings that nurture and enrich that engagement, bringing imaginative, critical, responsible thought to the making of things, so they stand, stir, accommodate, intrigue, and take a rightful place in people's lives.
Integrity, transparency, precision, and creative thought come first.
Looking and listening comes before sketching.
A respect and preservation of our planet matters: listening to the land and building with respect to it, not against it.
Collaboration drives the work: client, builder, and the site itself all get a say.
Above all, a space should make you feel good: a little lighter, a little brighter.
CooperStudio
San Francisco, CA