Biography

Thomas Gardner is an educator and designer.  His teaching and research explore design methodologies and tactical technologies, with a particular focus on fabrication, construction and emerging practices. He is the co-founder of HousingOperative, a design-build agency based in Detroit and dedicated to the realization of architecture for social and cultural change.

Following his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin, Thomas worked with a number of leading studios, including Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Steven Holl Architects in New York, as well as Stanley Saitowitz in San Francisco, where he served as project architect for the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston.  Subsequently, he completed his graduate studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art, where his thesis focused on post-industrial urban housing, resulting in the design and construction of the first single-family dwelling in a downtown Detroit neighborhood in over 80 years.

Thomas has taught architecture and design at Lawrence Technological University and Parsons The New School for Design. Currently, he teaches in the Department of Architecture at Rhode Island School of Design and is the founder of Complementary & Alternative Production, a cross-disciplinary art and design initiative.

Thomas Gardner

Critic
tgardner@risd.edu
401-454-6281

• BARC, University of Texas, Austin
• MARCH, Cranbrook Academy of Art

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