INFORMATION

Grant Gillis is an award-winning full-service architecture and design firm led by Thurman Grant and Matthew Gillis, combining over 50 years of experience across a diverse range of building types and scales.

Recent projects by Grant Gillis include the design of a multi-phase renovation of the American Museum of Ceramic Arts (AMOCA) in Pomona, California, for which they were awarded a 2023 AIA Next LA Award Citation for unbuilt work as well as a 2022 Architect’s Newspaper Best of Design Awards Editor’s choice for unbuilt work. Grant Gillis has been Executive Architect for a new Zara department store in Rancho Cucamonga as well as remodels to their Santa Monica, Los Angeles Farmers Market and San Francisco locations. Ongoing projects include the development of artist live/work residential and mixed-use projects in Bronzeville, Milwaukee, in conjunction with the HomeWorks: Bronzeville artist group and a variety of residential projects in Los Angeles.

Grant Gillis offers a range of design services, from pre-design through project completion, including:

Architectural Design
Landscape Design
Interior Design
Exhibit/Installation Design
Master Planning
Pre-Planning Consultation
Project Management

Thurman Grant is a Los Angeles-based architect and educator with over 30 years of experience working on a long list of built commercial, residential, and institutional projects, as well as award-winning design competitions in the U.S., Europe and Asia, including being a design team member for both the First-prize winning San Francisco Embarcadero Waterfront Competition and the First-prize winning Danggam Housing Competition in Busan, South Korea.
Thurman has acted as Executive Architect or Architect of Record for many large institutional and commercial projects, including the award-winning 42,00 sf Claremont University Consortium's Administrative Center, designed by LTL Architects; for extensive Tenant Improvements to the Fox Rothschild Law Offices in Century City, Los Angeles, designed by Francis Cauffman; and was also the Project Manager for Executive Architect Kovac Design Studio for the Los Angeles locations of Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie clothing stores as well as the ACA Joe boutique clothing store at the Beverly Center shopping mall in Beverly Hills. He was the Kovac Design Studio lead designer for the Bright Child Indoor children's play spaces in Los Angeles and Salt Lake City. Additionally, Thurman has consulted on projects for award-winning Los Angeles architecture firms, including Chu-Gooding Architects, Bestor Architecture and others.

Thurman is the former president of the LA Forum for Architecture and Urban Design, sitting on the board of directors from 2009-2013 and serving as president in 2012-2013. From 2005-2016, he was an adjunct faculty member at Woodbury University, teaching in the interior architecture and architecture departments as well as through the university’s programs in China and the Rome Center for Architecture and Culture in Italy. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Southern California, and studied in the university’s Milan/Como program in Italy. His first independent exhibition, a collaborative on-site installation with artist Olivia Booth at the MAK Center for Art & Architecture at the Schindler House, was part of Schindler Lab, Round 1 in spring 2011. He co-edited the publication Dingbat 2.0: The Iconic Los Angeles Apartment as Projection of a Metropolis, released by DoppelHouse Press in 2016.

Matthew Gillis, AIA is an architect and educator, with over 25 years of architectural design, project management, and construction experience on project types including residential, commercial, educational and institutional. His diverse portfolio incorporates a broad range of experience in a variety of design fields, from interior design, exhibit and installation design to landscape design and master planning. Matthew has previously worked in the offices of Coop Himmel(b)lau in Guadalajara, and Griffin Enright Architects in Los Angeles, where he worked on multiple award-winning design projects and buildings. A specialty of Matthew's is educational buildings, and he has lead projects ranging from the interior remodel of sixteen classrooms at the John Thomas Dye School to the new construction of the 72,000 s.f. St. Thomas School, both in Los Angeles.

In addition to being a principal at Grant Gillis, Matthew leads G!LL!S design studio, which is committed to experimental design, research and publication. He served on the board of directors for the Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design from 2012-2016, where he sat on the editorial board, and was featured in the Forum's "Out There Doing It" series of emerging practices in 2012.

Matthew has taught design studios and seminars in the graduate and undergraduate Interior Architecture and Architecture departments at Woodbury University since 2004, serving as a Full-time Faculty of Practice and Assistant Professor from 2013-2017. He has received design research grants through both Woodbury University and the ACADIA Conference. Matthew previously taught design studios and visual study seminars at SCI-Arc from 2009-2013, and at OTIS College of Design from 2011-2013. He holds a Master of Architecture degree from UCLA and attended the Vicenza Institute of Architecture in Italy while receiving his Bachelor of Design in Architecture degree from the University of Florida.

GRANT GILLIS

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