Judges - Completed 2023
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Thomas Kong

Deputy Head of the Department of Architecture and Assistant Dean for Development in the College of Design and Engineering NUS

Thomas Kong is the Deputy Head of the Department of Architecture and Assistant Dean for Development in the College of Design and Engineering, NUS. He holds a Bachelor of Arch (Hons) degree from the National University of Singapore, and a Master of Architecture, with distinction, from Cranbrook Academy of Art, USA. He is a licensed architect in Singapore and an American Institute of Architects associate member. He has over 20 years of experience teaching architecture and interior architecture in Singapore, Toronto, and Chicago and was the chair of the professional Master of Architecture (With an Emphasis on Interior Architecture) programme at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). From 2009 to 2012, he was the co-chair of the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects at SAIC.
 
In 2014, the Council of Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) recognised Thomas as one of their visionaries. The following year, the U.S.-based organisation Project for Public Space inducted him into Placemaking Leadership Council. In 2019, he served as a task force member of the IFI's Interior Architecture/Design Education Policy. He is currently a member of the Asia Pacific Space Designers Association education policy committee and sits on the Singapore Interior Design Accreditation
Council. Thomas has received awards and grants from Finland, the Netherlands, the U.S., and Singapore. He has lectured and published internationally on the intersection of art and design education and interior architecture. From 2020 to 2022, he was the principal investigator for a
research project funded by the National Heritage Board, which introduced the concept of social curating and archiving as a pedagogical tool for intergenerational learning and a social strategy to transform personal possessions of Whampoa elders into a public legacy.