Onera Foundation

05/28/2026

04/18/2026

On April 28, the Onera Foundation welcomes Onera Prize 2025 recipient and interior designer–turned preservation research fellow Anne Maxwell Foster for a talk that revisits one of the most overlooked elements of the built environment: the window awning.

Once a defining feature of city streets, awnings offered a simple, low-tech way to reduce heat and improve comfort long before air conditioning. Today, Foster’s research asks what these forgotten elements might still offer—and what stands in the way of bringing them back.

Ahead of her talk, we asked her a few questions about her work.

Once a defining feature of city streets, awnings offered a simple, low-tech way to reduce heat and improve comfort long before air conditioning. Onera Prize 2025 recipient and interior designer–turned preservation research fellow Anne Maxwell Foster asks what these forgotten elements might still o...