James Carpenter has worked at the intersection of art, engineering and the built environment for 50 years, advancing a distinctive vision based on the use of natural light and glass as the foundational elements of the built environment. Carpenter founded the cross-disciplinary design firm James Carpenter Design Associates in 1979 to support the application of these aesthetic principles to large-scale building projects.
Carpenter has also co-founded Carpenter Norris Consulting, which develops custom daylighting systems for architectural structures that reduce reliance on electrical lighting; and Carpenter/Lowings Architecture and Design, based in the United Kingdom.
Carpenter has been recognized with numerous national and international awards, including an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. He holds a degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and was a Loeb Fellow of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.
