Anna Maria Sy

Anna Maria Sy, also known as Anna Sy-Lawrence, co-founded C|S Architecture with Jason Chai in 1992 and established its Manila arm, CS Design Consultancy, Inc., in 1994. She studied architecture at Columbia University and Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where she was among the first Filipino women accepted, and worked as a design architect at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill before building her own practice. She is a registered architect in the United States.

From the Manila office she leads work spanning single-family homes, high-rise residences, corporate interiors and institutional buildings. Her approach is modernist and layout-driven; she has said the plan comes first, before any preconceived idea of how the finished building should look, citing Mies van der Rohe as an influence.

Her best-known Philippine work sits in Bonifacio Global City, including the De La Salle University College of Law campus, a seven-storey green building that earned a special commendation at the Urban Land Institute Philippines Healthy Places Awards. In residential projects such as the B Residence, she draws on the openness of the Filipino bahay na bato, prioritizing spatial flow over signature style.