Source Thomas Fowler IV, Showing the Fabrication of Wooden Trusses for First Classroom Building for Tanzania Polytechnic College
“Architecture is the learned game, correct and magnificent, of forms assembled in the light.” – Le Corbusier
Visualize a world without architecture. No magical places to visit, a lack of engaging the local heritage/culture/context in the design of spaces, and the possible limits to how well a city’s skyline is defined. In reality, architecture is more than just developing buildings. Architecture has a significant role in developing the inheritance of the world. When architecture is done well, it reflects culture. It gives a glimpse of history framed in a story of what the people have left behind while providing an aspirational trajectory for how we will occupy these building spaces soon.
Architecture should improve the quality of one’s life. Still, it should not be limited to developing the aesthetic value for what an architect brings to the design but also how the building responds to its placed environment’s social fabric and climatic conditions. An example is the work of a Western African Architect, Francis Kéré, the 2022 Pritzker Prize Laureate, who has focused his entire body of work on the power of materiality rooted in place. Kéré takes full advantage of maintaining the immense cultural significance of the project’s story same time of turning the limitations of materials, advanced technology for the construction, and the need for the building designs to work well off the grid so all of the passive systems of the natural wind for cooling spaces and using the daylight of the sun without the heat into a magical response that all inhabitants of his projects appreciate how well all of these project components for so well together to make a significant response.
His (Kéré’s) buildings, for and with communities, are directly of those communities – in their making, their materials, their programs and their unique characters. They are tied to the ground on which they sit and to the people who sit within them. They have presence without pretense and an impact shaped by grace.
The Pritzker Architecture Prize Jury Comments[i]
Cal Poly Architecture Professor Thomas Fowler IV has amalgamated architecture into philanthropism by creating innovative and imaginative design studios and multi-disciplinary collaborations with other disciplines outside of architecture that has developed invaluable links between the classroom and the professional practice of architecture. These unique opportunities are provided through several innovative programs that he has evolved over the years: The first is that he founded the Community Interdisciplinary Design Studio (CIDS), a ground-breaking classroom environment that provides extraordinary opportunities for students, faculty, and industry leaders working directly with clients to interweave scholarship with academia, professional development with research, and service at local and national levels. Inspired by the program’s multi-disciplinary and innovative design-build community projects with the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Engineering, the University launched its first cross-college degree program, Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies Program (LAES). A highlighted sample project is the Ocean Site One project with architecture students working with a multi-disciplinary team that also includes Ocean Biologist, faculty/industry practitioners, artists, and filmmakers to tell the historical story of the 23 abandoned oil rigs off the central coast of California (Santa Barbara / Goleta Areas). The documentary focus on developing a virtual reality immersion/game and exhibition of the range of issues to capture the balanced story of rigs, from the 60 + history, to what to do with the unanticipated and very successful artificial reefs under the rigs and the range of environmental issues connected to removing/keeping/modifying.
The second is the Design Collaboratory[ii] which is co-founded with a structural engineering colleague to provide undergraduate and graduate students of architecture and building structural engineering students (from the Department of Architectural Engineering) to participate in this think tank environment for developing innovative design solutions for a range of small-scale design-build projects working with faculty, industry leaders, and client. A highlighted sample project is the Center for Centering[iii] which is a portable flat packable dome that was designed and fabricated working with clients interested in establishing a Center for Centering, grounded in the belief that healthy societies begin with healthy individuals; the Centering Center provides natural respite and creative space for individual reflection, revitalization, and experimentation.
The third level is volunteer work with the NGO Mbesese Initiative for Sustainable Development (MISD). Mbesese is derived from the Northern Tanzanian pare tribe’s word for “the sparks that ignite a fire.” Mbesese is a multidisciplinary collaborative of industry professionals, students, academics, and humanitarians pioneering a broader, integrated approach to ending poverty. In 2014, Fowler became a collaborative partner on the multidisciplinary team that developed the master plan and the classroom design proposals for Same Polytechnic College in Tanzania. Highlights include projects; Majevu Primary School Footbridge, Test Structure, and ongoing development of classrooms for evolving future Polytechnic College.
Other activities that Fowler has been involved with include his passion for assisting underprivileged students who want to pursue higher education. He has collaborated with a former student for over a decade on a project called “INTERNNECT,” a program that is dedicated to exposing high school students to the opportunities to work for the disciplines that build for the environment (architecture, landscape architecture, regional city planning, architectural engineering, and construction management. The free program has more than 60 participants that visit Cal Poly twice a year.
Background
Fowler has experience working as Project Manager at several architectural firms in New York City: Project Manager at Garrison McNeil Architects and Planners, and design team member Brody, Davis Bond, and in Washington, DC, for Hartmon Cox and was a Project Manager for UC Berkeley’s Planning Design and Construction, while he taught parttime as a lecturer in the architecture department.
He served as the Director of Minority Educational Affairs in the College of Architecture at Cornell University and a graduate student in the Architecture Department.
Fowler is a Professor and Graduate Program Director at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, CA. Over the years, Fowler received more than 20 awards for his teaching (selected highlights include): one of the nation’s 25 most admired educators by Design Intelligence in 2012 and 2020, received the prestigious Wang Family Excellence Award from California State University (CSU) in 2019 and Distinguished Teaching Award at Cal Poly State University both in 2019 and selected as a Distinguished Professor of the Association of the Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA), 2010. For nearly three decades, Professor Fowler’s students have consistently been recognized for their award-winning design work at international, national, regional, and local levels. Many of Professor Fowler’s former students have been inspired by his teaching and have been successful early on in their careers, captured very well by these quotes:
Thomas Fowler’s personal integrity and commitment to excellence in educating future generations of architects is an asset to our profession and discipline.
Dominic Leong Founding Partner Leong Leong, Manhattan, New York, and BARCH 2001
“Fowler has been instrumental in the architectural education and professional development of so many Cal Poly architecture graduates.” – Margot McDonald- Head of the Architecture Department
Born on May 24, 1960, Fowler is a licensed architect who received his Master’s in Architecture from Cornell University and his Bachelor’s in Architecture from the New York Institute of Technology, Old Westbury. Fowler has been a contributing author to several books, A Teachers View: Becoming an Architect (Guide to Careers in Design), By Lee Waldrep; and Professional Practice 101, A Compendium of Effective Business Strategies in Architecture by Andy Pressman, and in collaboration with three others, “Cal Poly Architecture and Architectural Engineering Studio: A Collaboratory, Collaborations in Architecture and Engineering, Rout- ledge, NY, by Olsen, Clare and Mac Namara, Sinead.
Thomas Fowler is an educator, architect, multi-disciplinary collaborator, and philanthropist who has devoted his teaching and practice career to contributing as much as possible to making a difference in the classroom and the community. For over three decades, he has served in various administrative positions, founding and co-founding a series of innovative, collaborative organizations, co-teaching interdisciplinary design studios at a graduate level, and teaching comprehensive building design studios at an undergraduate level. Professional Fowler has also been recognized for his national and international volunteer activities with the National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB) and the impacts of his involvement on architectural education.
