Jane Thompson, AICP, Hon. AIA, principal of Thompson Design Group, is an urbanist, designer and planner, whose work over forty years has touched cities in North America and around the world.

Ms. Thompson’s career in the design field has embraced both writing about it and working at it professionally.

Educated in the fine and applied arts at Vassar College

Vassar College

Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...

 with graduate work at Bennington College

Bennington College

Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

 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

Museum of Modern Art

The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

, becoming acting Assistant Curator in the Department of Architecture. This was followed by positions as Architecture Editor of Interiors Magazine and as the Founding Editor of Industrial Design (later I.D. International Design.)

In the 1960s, sponsored by Edgar Kaufmann Jr.'s Foundation, she worked with Walter Gropius

Walter Gropius

Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....

 on an exploration of the creative educational methods of the original Bauhaus; she became a partner in architect Ben Thompson’s pioneering retail venture, Design Research

Design Research (store)

Design Research or D/R was an innovative retail store founded in 1953 by Ben Thompson in Cambridge, Massachusetts; later it became a chain of a dozen stores across the United States; it went bankrupt in 1978...

, during its 60s expansion from Cambridge to New York to California.

Benjamin Thompson Associates 1967-1994

Jane’s relationship with AIA Gold Medalist Ben Thompson (she became his second wife) began prior to the founding of Benjamin Thompson & Associates, Architects and Planners (BTA) in 1967. She participated in Thompson's self-sponsored pro-bono proposal to revitalize Boston’s abandoned Quincy Market

Quincy Market

Quincy Market is a historic building near Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston, Massachusetts. It was constructed 1824–1826 and named in honor of Mayor Josiah Quincy, who organized its construction without any tax or debt.-History:...

 site, which ultimately absorbed 12 years of historic restoration until completion of the instantly successful Faneuil Hall Marketplace, in which the Thompsons were also restaurateurs for two decades. The office practice in Cambridge (with Jane handling programming and planning ) blossomed with creative restoration projects, mixed use markets and urban waterfront developments around the world, In addition to waterfront restorations in New York, Baltimore and Miami with The Rouse Company

The Rouse Company

The Rouse Company, founded by James W. Rouse in 1939, was a publicly held shopping mall and community developer from 1956 until 2004, when General Growth Properties Inc...

, BTA had commissions for waterfront revitalization in London, Cardiff, Dublin, Amsterdam, Yokohama and Tokyo. In the noted restoration of Washington’s Union Station (1984–1988), BTA was responsible for replanning and redesign of the multi-modal terminal facility. Late in her career at BTA,as partner for planning, Jane headed Thompson's project teams on large urban planning projects, including the Chicago Navy Pier and Grand Central Business Improvement District. Ben Thompson retired in 1994, and died in 2002.

Founding of Thompson Design Group 1994-2010

Since 1994, as Principal of her own firm, Thompson Design Group (TDG), Jane creates places for people by addressing social interaction, commercial exchange, and economic vitality in the firm’s planning and design work. With an emphasis on preservation and imaginative reuse of obsolete places, her TDG master plan projects have included Navy Pier in Chicago, Master plan for Governor’s Island NYC and Cleveland’s North Coast Harbor.

Since 1994 Thompson Design Group has branched into large scale redevelopment planning; the firm’s Master Planning and Development Guidelines for the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Branch,_New_Jersey)|City of Long Branch NJ, leading the city’s redevelopment for over a decade, have received top awards from the Monmouth County Planning Department and New Jersey State Department of Planning. A TDG Master Plan for all lands bordering Houston’s 10-mile-long Buffalo Bayou district has won acclaim as a comprehensive urban planning model.

Jane was active on the IDCA (International Design Conference in Aspen) from 1971–2002, as a Board member, program chairman, and speaker. In 2000, she was awarded Institute Honors by the American Institute of Architects, and received the Personal Recognition Award of the Industrial Design Society of America for a lifetime contribution to the field of design.

For their lifelong support of Finnish Design and way of life, the President of Finland in 2000 named Ben and Jane Thompson each individually as Knight First Class, Order of the Lion of Finland.

In 2010, "Sir Lady Jane' as she was nicknamed, was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.