Thomas Padmanabhan, born 1970, studied Architecture at RWTH Aachen, La Sapienza Rome, and Cornell University. After his Diploma he worked for Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Meili Peter, and Diener & Diener.

Together with Oliver Lütjens, he established Lütjens Padmanabhan Architects in 2007. The practice’s recent work focuses on housing in the residential districts surrounding Zurich and Basel including the award-winning low rent Waldmeisterweg apartment building in Zurich and the Zwhatt Sufficiency lighthouse project in Regensdorf. Further afield, they are currently working on the new residence of the Swiss ambassador in Algiers and the new Swiss general consulate in Stuttgart.

The practice won the 2019 Architecture Prize of the Canton Zurich and the 2020 Good Buildings Award of the City of Zurich.

Thomas has taught as an assistant at the chair of Peter Märkli and Markus Peter at ETH Zurich and as a guest professor at TU Munich and EPF Lausanne. He has been teaching at the Harvard GSD in 2020 and 2022.