Michel Halflants studied architecture at the St. Lucas Institute, in Brussels, Belgium, and earned a master’s degree in architecture at the University of Florida, where he was awarded the Henry Adams Gold Medal, the department’s highest design honor. Upon graduation, Halflants worked as a project designer at the Polshek Partnership, in New York. In that capacity, he drew designs for theaters and offices in Manhattan and the Spencer Museum, in Kansas. Working in a joint venture with Arata Isozaki’s Tokyo office, he was on the design team for the Brooklyn Museum’s addition.
In 2006, he co-founded the firm Halflants + Pichette Architects with John Pichette, with offices in Tampa and Sarasota, Florida. Since then, the firm has been honored with over fifty American Institute of Architects awards including the National AIA Young Architect Award and the Tampa Bay AIA Firm of the Year award. Since 2014, the practice has garnered five national medals from the Association of Licensed Architects. In February 2018, the Illinois Institute of Technology nominated one of the firm’s projects, the “Anna Maria House,” for the prestigious Mies Crown Hall Prize of the Americas. In 2018, Halflants was recognized with the AIA Florida Medal of Honor for Design, the highest award that AIA Florida can bestow on an architect.
Michael Halflants is a tenured professor at the University of South Florida’s School of Architecture and Community Design. In that role, he has led students abroad to Mexico City, the Yucatan, Brazil, Japan, Berlin, the Netherlands, and Spain. In 2010, he was recognized for his work as an educator with the McMinn Award from the Florida/Caribbean AIA.
