Ming Thompson is an architect and designer based in New Haven, CT. She is co-founder of Atelier Cho Thompson and is a critic at the Yale School of Architecture.
Ming Thompson, NOMA, AIA, IIDA is focused on bettering human experience through design; she insists that good design must occur at all scales, from the building to the furniture to the logo, and everything in between.
Ming was a winner of the 2020 AIA Young Architect Award. Atelier Cho Thompson, the firm Ming co-founded with Christina Cho Yoo, has been honored with the IIDA Foundation Visionary Award and the Architect Newspaper Young Architects Award. ACT’s work has been featured in Metropolis, Architect Magazine, Interior Design Magazine, Dezeen, Divisare, and at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
Before founding ACT, Ming worked for firms around the globe, including Zephyr Architects in Beijing and Bohlin Cywinski Jackson in SF. She has also worked as a designer for non-profits, with a specialty in building community around design. Deeply interested in bringing arts to the public, Ming has worked in museums throughout her career, including the Peggy Guggenheim and the National Gallery, and has created exhibitions as an independent curator.
Design
Speaking and Writing
Ming frequently writes and speaks about the profession of architecture, in particular topics including Equity in Architecture, New Typologies in Architecture, and Building an Innovative Firm. Ming is also a frequent contributor to New York Magazine’s Curbed and Strategist publications on the topic of design.
Ming currently teaches two courses at the Yale School of Architecture. Each fall, she teaches Design Brigade, a community design course, alongside Professors Elihu Rubin and Dana Karwas. Each spring, she is on the teaching team for the Yale Building Project, the long-standing course in which students design and build a home for a real world client.
Teaching
Outside of architecture, Ming is a First-Year Advisor at Yale, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Yale-China Association, the Board of Directors of the New Haven Preservation Trust, and the Board of Directors of AIA Connecticut. Ming recently joined the Alumni Council at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.