Jane Thompson
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Jane (Fiske McCullough) Thompson, AICP, Hon. AIA, principal of Thompson Design Group, is an urbanist, designer and planner, whose work over forty years has touched cities in North America and around the world.
Ms. Thompson’s career in the design field has embraced both writing about it and working at it professionally.
Educated in the fine and applied arts at Vassar College with graduate work at Bennington College and NYU Institute of Fine Arts, her career has been devoted to the interaction of many facets of applied design. She spent early years in the Museum of Modern Art, becoming acting Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture. This was followed by positions as Architecture Editor of Interiors Magazine and as the Founding Editor of Industrial Design (later I.D. International Design.)
In the 1960s, sponsored by Edgar Kaufmann Jr.'s Foundation, she worked with Walter Gropius on an exploration of the creative educational methods of the original Bauhaus; she became a partner in architect Ben Thompson’s pioneering retail venture, Design Research, during its 60s expansion from Cambridge to New York to California.
Benjamin Thompson Associates 1967-1994
Jane’s relationship with AIA Gold Medalist Ben Thompson (she became his second wife) began prior to the founding of Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Architects and Planners (BTA) in 1967. She participated in Thompson's self-sponsored pro-bono proposal to revitalize Boston’s abandoned Quincy Market site, which ultimately absorbed 12 years of historic restoration until completion of the instantly successful Faneuil Hall Marketplace, in which the Thompsons were also restaurateurs for two decades. The office practice in Cambridge (with Jane handling programming and planning ) blossomed with creative restoration projects, mixed use markets and urban waterfront developments around the world, In addition to waterfront restorations in New York, Baltimore and Miami with The Rouse Company, BTA had commissions for waterfront revitalization in London, Cardiff, Dublin, Amsterdam, Yokohama and Tokyo. In the noted restoration of Washington’s Union Station (1984–1988), BTA was responsible for replanning and redesign of the multi-modal terminal facility. Late in her career at BTA,as partner for planning, Jane headed Thompson's project teams on large urban planning projects, including the Chicago Navy Pier and Grand Central Business Improvement District. Ben Thompson retired in 1994, and died in 2002.
Founding of Thompson Design Group 1994-2010
Since 1994, as Principal of her own firm, Thompson Design Group (TDG), Jane creates places for people by addressing social interaction, commercial exchange, and economic vitality in the firm’s planning and design work. With an emphasis on preservation and imaginative reuse of obsolete places, her TDG master plan projects have included Navy Pier in Chicago, Master plan for Governor’s Island NYC and Cleveland’s North Coast Harbor.
Since 1994 Thompson Design Group has branched into large scale redevelopment planning; the firm’s Master Planning and Development Guidelines for the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Branch,_New_Jersey) |City of Long Branch NJ, leading the city’s redevelopment for over a decade, have received top awards from the Monmouth County Planning Department and New Jersey State Department of Planning. A TDG Master Plan for all lands bordering Houston’s 10-mile-long Buffalo Bayou district has won acclaim as a comprehensive urban planning model.
Jane was active on the IDCA (International Design Conference in Aspen) from 1971–2002, as a Board member, program chairman, and speaker. In 2000, she was awarded Institute Honors by the American Institute of Architects, and received the Personal Recognition Award of the Industrial Design Society of America for a lifetime contribution to the field of design.
For their lifelong support of Finnish Design and way of life, the President of Finland in 2000 named Ben and Jane Thompson each individually as Knight First Class, Order of the Lion of Finland.
In 2010, "Sir Lady Jane' as she was nicknamed, was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.
Bibliography
- Jane Thompson and Alexandra Lange, Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes, 2010. ISBN 0811868184.