biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1919– )
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| biography:
| Architect and urban designer, born in St Paul, Minnesota, USA. He studied at the University of Virginia before graduating from Yale, then served in the US Navy in World War 2 (1941–5). After the War, he and some young architect friends at Harvard's architecture school invited the school's head, Walter Gropius, to start a firm with them. It was known as Architects' Collaborative, and it took the lead in designing classic modern buildings. In 1953, Thompson and his wife Jane Thompson, an editor and curator, started Design Research, a firm based in Cambridge, MA that imported and sold the latest in European furnishings and housewares. He is credited with suggesting (c.1967) that Boston renovate its fading Faneuil Hall-Quincy Market neighbourhood to attract people, and his firm won the design competition (and developer James Rouse became their collaborator). Their success in Boston led to the firm (renamed Benjamin Thompson Associates) to take on other renovation projects such as the Union Station in Washington, DC, and the Ordway Theatre in St Paul, MN. In 1992 he was awarded the American Institute of Architects' gold medal. |
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