Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/380083
CULTURED 151 verything about New York-based architect Thomas Phifer is serene. His architecture uses understated but elegant forms in unassuming ways. In his portfolio of cultural, commercial and top-shelf residential projects, he consistently blurs boundaries between the inside and outside with a keen awareness of natural light. Phifer himself, a native of South Carolina who cut his teeth working with the likes of Charles Gwathmey and Richard Meier, speaks in careful, hushed tones: part guru, all Southern gentleman. Even his SoHo office is as quiet as a church; his staff glides around his studio on thick wall-to-wall carpeting that muffles footsteps. "We look for a sense of calm," says Phifer of the common thread in his work, which includes the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) and a glass-walled pavilion at Rice University. "There's a reductive nature to the work, so there's no excess." His status as a lauded architect who counts the Rome Prize in 1995 among his many achievements makes his most recent project all the more surprising: a United States courthouse in Salt Lake City, Utah. The monolithic project, covered in hundreds of custom aluminum louvers that direct light and conserve energy, is close to the architect's heart; Phifer won the competition to design the 10-story, 400,000-square-foot courthouse nearly 15 years ago, shortly after starting his own firm in 1997. Due to post-9/11 regulations and eminent domain issues, the project went through various revisions before finally opening last April. Despite the many large works in his portfolio—including the soon-to-be-completed expansions of the Corning Museum of Glass, as well as Maryland's Glenstone museum that begins construction this fall—Phifer considers the courthouse to be his first "truly public building." For inspiration, he studied the simple aluminum boxes of Donald Judd and geometric sculptures of Roni Horn. "They seem to just receive and absorb light," he says of Judd's boxes, "and then push it out." E