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Profile: Thomas Payne is one of KPMB's four founding partners. He was educated at Princeton University (B. Arch. 1971), L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and Yale University (M.Arch. 1974). Tom joined the offices of Barton Myers Associates in 1979, where he was responsible for the award-winning Portland Center for the Performing Arts in Oregon.

Tom was the design partner for two of KPMB's seminal projects: Woodsworth College at the University of Toronto, and the Joseph S. Stauffer Library at Queen’s University. He has overseen many of the firm's university projects, including the Raether Library and Information Technology Center at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, and Sprague Memorial Hall at Yale University, which has resulted in a second project for the Yale School of Music.

Tom is also recognized for his expertise in the field of performing arts. He has designed a number of performing arts facilities in which he has successfully negotiated the technical requirements with the design of acoustically and visually superior spaces. This work includes the Stratford Festival Theatre Expansion, the Roy Thomson Hall Enhancement, and the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. He recently completed the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto's Distillery District for the Soulpepper Theatre Company and George Brown College's Theatre Training program.

Recent projects of note include the Walgreen Drama Center and Arthur Miller Theatre for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the Federal Judicial Centre located on Queen Street West in Toronto and the Lexus Lounge in Roy Thomson Hall, which was awarded the 2004 Best of Canada Award, and was selected as one of the 100 World's Best Bars by Australian Images Publishing Group.

Tom has been a visiting critic at the University of Toronto and Harvard University. His work has been published internationally in Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.