The School of Architecture's flagship Portman Prize Studio has fostered design excellence and student creativity in the School for twenty-five years. This year's studio, led by Portman Visiting Critic Thomas Phifer, FAIA, explored shaping light, and how the rituals that we go through every day can inform our relationship to light in nature. 

This year's program was a pilgrim's retreat on the Camino Frances, in Burgos, Spain. The Camino Frances, or French Way, is a 490 mile ancient pilgrimage route through northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.  But in contemporary times, the path is followed by both devout and secular ‘pilgrims’ – and the proposed building is a secular retreat meant to share a contemporary experience of architecture and light (and our circadian rhythms) similar to what monk’s might have experienced in many of the ancient monasteries and convents that exist in the area. 

Thomas Phifer, FAIA
Thomas Phifer and Partners

Since founding Thomas Phifer and Partners in 1997, Thomas Phifer has completed an expansion of the Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, the United States Courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah, the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion at Rice University in Houston, Texas, the Moody Amphitheater in Austin, Texas, and houses across the United States.

Projects under construction include the Museum of Modern Art and TR Warszawa Theatre in Warsaw, an artists' retreat in Maine, and the Wagner Park Pavilion, a key component of the South Battery Park City Resiliency Project in Lower Manhattan. Thomas Phifer is also engaged in private residences in Texas, Maine, and New York.

Since 1997, Thomas Phifer and Partners has received more than thirty honor awards from the American Institute of Architects. Mr. Phifer is the recipient of the Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome, the Medal of Honor and President’s Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA, the Arts and Letters Award in Architecture, and the National Design Award in Architectural Design from the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.  In 2022, he was elected as a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.