Jane Thompson, AICP (June 30, 1927 – August 22, 2016) was an American

urbanist Urbanism is the study of how inhabitants of urban areas, such as towns and cities, interact with the built environment. It is a direct component of disciplines such as urban planning, a profession focusing on the design and management of urban a ...

, designer and planner, with an international career exceeding forty years.

Biography

Thompson (née Fiske) was educated in the fine and applied arts at

Vassar College Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States. The college be ...

with graduate work at

Bennington College Bennington College is a private liberal arts college in Bennington, Vermont, United States. Founded as a women’s college in 1932,

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 The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, becoming acting Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture. This was followed by positions as Architecture Editor of ''Interiors Magazine''. In 1954, she helped found Industrial Design magazine (later known as International Design) and served as its Editor-in-Chief. In the 1960s, sponsored by

Edgar Kaufmann Jr Edgar is a commonly used masculine English given name, from an Anglo-Saxon name ''Edgar'' (composed of '' ead'' "rich, prosperous" and ''gar'' "spear"). Like most Anglo-Saxon names, it fell out of use by the Late Middle Ages; it was, however, ...

.'s Foundation, she worked with

Walter Gropius Walter Adolph Georg Gropius (; 18 May 1883 – 5 July 1969) was a German-born American architect and founder of the Bauhaus, Bauhaus School, who is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modernist architecture. He was a founder of ...

on an exploration of the creative educational methods of the original

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

; she became a partner in architect Ben Thompson's retail venture,

Design Research Design research was originally constituted as primarily concerned with ways of supporting and improving the process of design, developing from work in design methods. The concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of ...

, during its 60s expansion from Cambridge to New York to California. She married Ben Thompson in 1969. Thompson handled programming and planning at Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Architects and Planners (BTA), working on large urban planning projects, including the

Chicago Navy Pier Navy Pier is a pier on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, located in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Navy Pier encompasses over of shops, restaurants, live theaters, famil ...

and Grand Central Business Improvement District. She later founded the Thompson Design Group, working with Pratap Talwar on well-received large-scale redevelopment plans, such as for Houston's

Buffalo Bayou Buffalo Bayou is a slow-moving river which flows through Houston in Harris County, Texas. Formed 18,000 years ago, it has its source in the prairie surrounding Katy, Texas, Katy, Fort Bend County, Texas, Fort Bend County, and flows approximately ...

waterway. Thompson was active in the International Design Conference in Aspen (IDCA) from 1971 to 2002, as a board member, program chairman, and speaker. She died at the age of 89 on August 22, 2016.

Honors

Thompson was awarded Institute Honors by the

American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C. AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach progr ...

in 1994, and in 1998 received the Personal Recognition Award of the Industrial Design Society of America for a lifetime contribution to the field of design in 1996. For their lifelong support of Finnish Design and way of life, the President of

Finland Finland, officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe. It borders Sweden to the northwest, Norway to the north, and Russia to the east, with the Gulf of Bothnia to the west and the Gulf of Finland to the south, ...

in 2000 named Ben and Jane Thompson each individually as Knight First Class,

Order of the Lion of Finland Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

. In 2010, "Sir Lady Jane" as she was nicknamed (as both a Knight and wife of a Knight) was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facili ...

. Then followed an Honorary PhD from

Boston Architectural College The Boston Architectural College (BAC) is a private college in Boston. It is New England's largest private college of spatial design. The college's main building is at 320 Newbury Street in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood. History Boston Arc ...

, 2011, and the lifetime Award of Honor from

Boston Society of Architects The Boston Society for Architecture (formerly known as the Boston Society of Architects) (BSA) is a nonprofit membership organization committed to architecture, design and the built environment. History On June 20, 1867, approximately 50 archi ...

in 2012.

Bibliography

* Jane Thompson and

Alexandra Lange Alexandra Lange is an American Architecture criticism, architecture and design critic and author based in New York. She won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, as a contributing writer for Bloomberg News, Bloomberg Citylab. The author of a ser ...

, ''Design Research: The Store That Brought Modern Living to American Homes'', 2010. .

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, Jane 1927 births 2016 deaths American designers National Design Award winners Vassar College alumni Bennington College alumni New York University Institute of Fine Arts alumni Knights First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland 20th-century American architects 21st-century American architects American urban planners American women architects Women urban planners 21st-century American women