Thomas Wingate

Born in Norway in 1972. Grew up in Sweden.

An early fascination by the experiences and environments created for theatre led me to start designing costumes and sets. This led on to working with metal as well as creating events and experience-spaces for people. I worked as a freelance creative director and project manager between 1995 and 2002. Designing, developing and building interior and exterior space applied in the fields of commercial and private interiors, theatre, film and TV set design and architecture. 2002 saw a distinct shift in direction where I applied my knowledge of 3D CAD and parametric design on large scale architectural projects - I wanted to see how far I could take things if I focused all my efforts on computational tools.

A lot of my early work and large scale architectural projects focused on parametric design but after a few years I started to see how the real bottlenecks were not in design capability of a team or clever use of tools but rather in the complexity of the process itself.
It was interesting to observe how a design team consisting of some of the smartest people in the country still struggled with taking a vision all the way through to completion. Constraining factors have less to do with individual skill or tools and more to do with collaboration and the “information logistics” of the construction process.
This led me away from the more design oriented work on parametric modeling, and really design projects in general. I have since 2004 been exploring Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and various aspects of systems- and process-engineering for construction management. A somewhat less glamorous path but ultimately with a greater potential impact on the AEC industry as a whole.
These days I'm looking to integrate parametric design with what I've learned from PLM and process integration. I'm interested in smaller projects and more agile teams with the ability to leapfrog a lot of the inertia of traditional construction.

One of my greatest assets is that I’m mainly self taught. Always knew what I wanted to do and always looking for the fastest route to learning I've have picked bits and pieces of knowledge as needed through projects and people. This gives me a very direct approach to spatial creation and the acquiring of knowledge. It has also taught me the value of working together with people and I much prefer good collaborative creativity to egocentric hierarchy. I find I’m often the odd piece in the puzzle giving me the opportunity to look at problems from a different angle. I design and develop as well as involve myself in the making of projects and enjoy getting my hands dirty.

With a bit of a hacker background I have a lifelong interest in digital culture and tools and have extensive computer skills in CAD/CAM and 3D animation software. In most of my projects I have integrated and investigated new ways of using computational tools.

In my spare time I enjoy riding my mountain bike down really steep hills and over big jumps or play around on the slopes on snowboard or skis.