Michael Halflants
, Associate Professor Michael Halflants is a practicing architect and principal at Halflants + Pichette Architects in Sarasota. He teaches advanced design studios, the materials’ course, as well as seminars on fabrication, tropical architecture, and modern housing. He has led students abroad to Mexico City, the Yucatan, Berlin, the Netherlands, and Spain.
After studying at the St Lucas Institute in Brussels, he earned a masters degree in architecture at the University of Florida, where he was awarded the Henry Adams Gold Medal, the department’s highest design honor. Upon graduation, he was first employed as a project designer with the Polshek Partnership in New York. In that capacity, he drew designs for theaters and offices in Manhattan and for the Spencer Museum in Kansas. Working in a joint venture with Arata Isozaki’s Tokyo office, he was on the design team for the Brooklyn Museum addition.
At USF, Professor Halflants strives to build and maintain deliberately parallel and mutually reinforcing creative professional activities and educational responsibilities. As a sole practitioner, he received the 2005 AIA Eduardo Garcia Award. In 2006, he cofounded the firm Halflants + Pichette Architects. The following year, the University of Florida honored him with the Young Architect Award. In 2010 alone, the firm was the recipient of eight American Institute of Architects Awards for designs ranging from single family houses to a Korean fellowship hall. The firm has also been recognized in the professional press at the state and national levels.
Professor Halflants has presented and published papers at international conferences in Bangkok and Jogjakarta. His design work is influenced by international modernism and yet is profoundly rooted in the subtropical setting of South Florida.
Website: Studio For Modern Architecture