![]() |
Thomas Phifer (born 1953 in South Carolina) is an American architect based in New York City. [1]
Phifer is perhaps best known for his design of the Glenstone Museum expansion in Potomac, Maryland, [2] [3] the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, [4] the Corning Museum of Glass Contemporary Art + Design expansion, [5] and the Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston, Texas. [6]
Phifer designed the new Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, currently under construction on the northern side of Plac Defilad next to the Palace of Culture and Science. [7] It is scheduled to open in 2024. [8]
Around 2006, Phifer won the City Lights Design Competition, for his design of standard LED streetlights which replaced New York City’s high-pressure sodium streetlights starting in 2011. [9]
Phifer was born in Columbia, South Carolina. He earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree in 1975 and a Master of Architecture degree in 1977, both from Clemson University. [10] He also studied at the Daniel Center for Architecture and Urban Studies in Genoa, Italy in 1976. [4]
Phifer held the Stevenson Chair at the University of Texas and taught at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania. [3] He served as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor of Architectural Design at the Yale School of Architecture. [11] He taught the Feltman Seminar at Cooper Union in the spring of 2022. [12]
Phifer launched his firm Thomas Phifer and Partners in 1997 [13] after a decade of working for Richard Meier. [14]
In 2022, Phifer was elected as a lifetime member to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. [15] That year, his Hudson Valley House II won a Architecture Honor Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA. [16]
In 2020, Phifer's expansion of Glenstone won a National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects [17] and the "Best in Competition" Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA. [18]
In 2020, Phifer's Corning Museum of Glass expansion won a National Honor Award for Interior Architecture from the AIA. [19] The project also won an Merit Award for Architecture from the New York Chapter of the AIA in 2016. [20]
In 2013, Phifer was awarded the Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. [21]
Phifer was also elected as an Academician for the National Academy of Design in 2012. [22]
In 2011, Phifer received a Fellowship from the American Institute of Architects. [23] The North Carolina Museum of Art, received a National Honor Award from the AIA in 2011. [24]
In 2010, the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion received a National Honor Award from the AIA [25] [26] and an Honor Award from the American Academy of Landscape Architecture. [27]
In 2009, he received a Research and Development Award from Architect magazine for his international competition-winning design for New York City's City Lights light fixture. [9]
Phifer's Salt Point House won an American Architecture Award from the Chicago Atheneum in 2008. [10]
In 2004, Phifer was awarded the Medal of Honor from the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Architects (AIA). [10] That year, he received National Honor Awards from the AIA for both Steelcase and Taghkanic House. [28]
Phifer received the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome in 1995, [29] and was honored with a residency the following year at the Academy's campus. [3]
The San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic John King described Phifer as "a master of meticulous modernism who has won praise for gem-like private homes and such cultural facilities as [the 2015] addition to the Corning Museum of Glass", but criticized 222 Second Street (completed by Tishman Speyer in 2016) as "designed and built by New Yorkers" without taking the building's San Francisco surroundings into account. [14]
Edward Durell Stone was an American architect known for the formal, highly decorative buildings he designed in the 1950s and 1960s. His works include the Museum of Modern Art, in New York City, the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico, the United States Embassy in New Delhi, India, The Keller Center at the University of Chicago, and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Eamonn Kevin Roche was an Irish-born American Pritzker Prize-winning architect. He was responsible for the design/master planning for over 200 built projects in both the U.S. and abroad. These projects include eight museums, 38 corporate headquarters, seven research facilities, performing arts centers, theaters, and campus buildings for six universities. In 1967 he created the master plan for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and thereafter designed all of the new wings and installation of many collections including the reopened American and Islamic wings.
Will Bruder is an American architect.
Steven Holl is a New York-based American architect and watercolorist.
Diller Scofidio + Renfro is an American interdisciplinary design studio that integrates architecture, the visual arts, and the performing arts. Based in New York City, Diller Scofidio + Renfro is led by four partners – Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro, and Benjamin Gilmartin – who work with a staff of architects, artists, designers, and researchers.
The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass objects, some over 3,500 years old.
Gluckman Tang Architects,, is a New York City–based architecture firm providing services in architecture, planning, and interior design. Established by Richard Gluckman in 1977, the firm focuses on a minimalist design approach.
Tom Kundig is an American architect and principal in the Seattle-based firm Olson Kundig Architects. He has won numerous professional honors.
Olson Kundig is an American architectural firm based in Seattle, Washington, run by architects Jim Olson and Tom Kundig. Founded by Olson in 1966, the firm’s work has grown to encompass museums, commercial and mixed-use design, exhibit design, interior design, places of worship, and residences, often for art collectors. Olson Kundig was awarded the 2009 AIA Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects.
Peter L. Gluck is principal of GLUCK+, an architecture firm based in New York City since 1972. A monograph of his work, The Modern Impulse, was published by ORO Editions in 2008. Gluck has designed buildings ranging from structures such as hotels, schools, university buildings and affordable housing to churches, homes, corporate interiors and historic restorations. Many of his projects regularly win national and international design awards and have been published in architectural journals and books in many countries. Gluck's sons are architect Thomas Gluck and director Will Gluck.
Annabelle Selldorf is a German-born architect and founding principal of Selldorf Architects, a New York City-based architecture practice. She is a fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA) and the recipient of the 2016 AIANY Medal of Honor. Her projects include the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility, Neue Galerie New York, The Rubell Museum, a renovation of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, David Zwirner's 20th Street Gallery, The Mwabwindo School, 21 East 12th Street, 200 11th Avenue, 10 Bond Street, and several buildings for the LUMA Foundation's contemporary art center in Arles, France.
TenBerke is a New York City, based architecture and interior design firm founded and led by Deborah Berke, who concurrently serves as Dean of the Yale School of Architecture.
Belzberg Architects is an architecture and interior design firm located in the City of Santa Monica, California founded by Hagy Belzberg, FAIA OAA.
Marlon Blackwell is an American architect and university professor in Arkansas. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects.
John Paul Chadwick Floyd, usually credited as Chad Floyd, is an American architect and a founding partner of Centerbrook Architects & Planners of Essex, Connecticut. Floyd’s work consists of academic, arts, civic, and residential projects. He is a member of the College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects and a fellow of the Institute of Urban Design.
Guy Nordenson is a structural engineer and professor of structural engineering and architecture at Princeton University School of Architecture. Guy has two children, Pierre and Sebastian Nordenson. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering in 1977, followed by a Masters of Science in Structural Engineering and Structural Mechanics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1978. After graduating from UC Berkeley he worked at Forell/Elsesser Engineers in San Francisco (1978-1982) and Weidlinger Associates in New York City (1982–1987), before establishing the New York office of Ove Arup & Partners in 1987 where he was a director until leaving in 1997 to begin his own structural engineering practice, Guy Nordenson and Associates.
Toshiko Mori is a Japanese architect and the founder and principal of New York-based Toshiko Mori Architect, PLLC and Vision Arc. She is also the Robert P. Hubbard Professor in the Practice of Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. In 1995, she became the first female faculty member to receive tenure at the GSD.
Daniel Kaven is an American architect and artist working in painting, film, writing, and photography. He is the co-founder of architecture and design studio William / Kaven Architecture and the author of Architecture of Normal: The Colonization of the American Landscape.
Glenstone is a private contemporary art museum in Potomac, Maryland, founded in 2006 by American billionaire Mitchell Rales and his wife, Emily Wei Rales. The museum's exhibitions are drawn from a collection of about 1,300 works from post-World War II artists around the world. It is the largest private contemporary art museum in the United States, holding more than $4.6 billion in net assets, and is noted for its setting in a broad natural landscape.
Aaron Neubert, FAIA is an American architect based in Los Angeles, California and the founder and principal of Aaron Neubert Architects. In 2021, Neubert was elevated to the college of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects for "notable contributions to the advancement of the profession of architecture."