Michael Halflants FAIA

Professor of Architecture
Phone: (813) 582-5045
Email: halflants@usf.edu
Website: halflantspichette.com

Michael Halflants is a professor of architecture at the USF School of Architecture & Community Design and a principal at Halflants + Pichette Architects.

Professor Michael Halflants joined the University of South Florida in 2002.  After studying architecture at the St Luc Institute in Brussels, he earned his masters at the University of Florida, where he was awarded the 1998 Henry Adams Gold Medal, the architecture school’s highest design honor.  Upon graduation, he worked as a project designer with the Polshek Partnership in New York.  In that capacity, he drew designs for theaters and offices in Manhattan and for 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 addition. 

In 2006, Professor Halflants cofounded Halflants + Pichette Architects, a design-build practice with offices in Sarasota and Tampa.  The firm was the recipient of sixty-six American Institute of Architects awards and garnered five national medals from the Association of Licensed Architects.  Halflants’ designs are often featured on the cover of Florida / Caribbean Architect, a quarterly publication of the AIA.   The work has been illustrated nationally in Dwell, AIArchitect, and Residential Design.   In recognition of his lifetime achievements, Halflants was awarded the 2018 AIA Florida Medal of Honor for Design, the highest award for design that AIA Florida can bestow upon an architect.  In 2021, he was inducted into the AIA College of Fellows. 

Professor Halflants has lectured on the topic of tropical design and housing in Bogota, Singapore, Jakarta, and Bangkok.  He teaches graduate design studios as well as seminars on tropical architecture, modern housing, and real estate.  He has led students abroad to Mexico City, the Yucatan, Brazil, Japan, Berlin, the Netherlands, and Spain.  In all of his endeavors, Michael Halflants strives to build and maintain deliberately parallel and mutually reinforcing creative professional activities and educational responsibilities.