Martha Thorne


Martha Thorne is an American architectural academic, curator, editor, and author. She served as the Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize for 15 years, and was also the dean of the Architecture School at IE University in Madrid.

Biography

Thorne holds degrees from State University of New York at Buffalo and University of Pennsylvania. She also pursued further studies at the London School of Economics.
From 1996 until 2005, she was Associate Curator for the Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago, where she was responsible for publication development, research initiatives, and collection curation.
In 2005, she was appointed Executive Director of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, a role she held until 2020.
From 2015 to 2021, she served as dean of IE University's Madrid and Segovia School of Architecture and Design. Before that, she was Associate Dean for External Relations at the same institution.
Thorne has also been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and has served on the Board of Advisors for the International Archive of Women in Architecture.

Style and work

Her main inspiration themes are the contemporary city and how architecture, design, and urbanism can contribute to sustainability and resilience; and how architecture and design education can evolve in both content and pedagogy to be more relevant for today’s challenges. From 1995 to 2005, she worked as curator in Department of Architecture at The Art Institute of Chicago. She has written numerous articles for books and journals on contemporary architecture and the city.

Selected works