Thomas Phifer

Thomas Phifer (born 1953 in South Carolina) is an American architect based in New York City.

He is perhaps best known for the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston, Texas and the design for the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland. Around 2006, Phifer won New York City‘s City Lights Design Competition, which began replacing the city’s high-pressure sodium streetlights with new standard LED streetlights starting in 2011.

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. He also studied at the Daniel Center for Architecture and Urban Studies in Genoa, Italy in 1976.

Phifer held the Stevenson Chair at the University of Texas and taught at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Phifer launched his firm Thomas Phifer and Partners in 1997 after a decade of working for Richard Meier.

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 (Phifer's first commercial office highrise, completed by Tishman Speyer in 2016) as "designed and built by New Yorkers" without taking the building's San Francisco surroundings into account.

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