Thomas Coldefy graduated from École Spéciale d’Architecture and worked in London, Paris, and New York before establishing Coldefy with Isabel Van Haute in 2006 in Lille.

Since winning an international competition to design the Hong Kong Design Institute that same year, Thomas has built Coldefy’s reputation as a progressive, outward-looking practice that works across all scales, both globally and regionally. Under his leadership, the studio has grown to include offices in Paris and Shanghai.

Driven by a profoundly social vision, Thomas’s approach employs meticulous consideration of the site and an urban ethos, prioritising density, diversity, and moments for human connection and reflection.

Combining conceptual clarity with architectural expression, Thomas has spearheaded some of Coldefy’s most prestigious projects, including the France Pavilion at the 2025 Osaka Expo, a collaborative proposal to renovate the European Parliament in Brussels, and the winning design for the National Pulse Memorial & Museum in Miami.

Thomas lectures widely, including at the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Miami School of Architecture, where he has also served as a guest critic, and the Venice Architecture Biennale. In 2014, he was appointed visiting professor at the Jilin Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering in China and has previously taught at École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris.

In 2022, he was awarded the title Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister for Culture. Last year, he participated in the Villa Albertine residency in the United States, researching urban greening strategies across different cities.