Thomas Fisher

Tom Fisher
Director, Minnesota Design Center; Professor
College of Design
612-624-1013

 

Thomas Fisher specializes in design thinking and systems design, including transportation systems and transportation-related land use and zoning. His 2011 book on fracture-critical design looked at how infrastructure vulnerable to sudden and catastrophic collapse characterized many post-WWII systems. 

His current work focuses on the infrastructure and community impacts of autonomous vehicles, mobility services, and the sharing economy as well as the land-use, transportation, and living and working impacts of pandemics. His most recent book, Space, Structures and Design in the Post-Pandemic World, looks at how previous pandemics have affected how we now live and work and how that history offers a sense of what we can expect in the coming decades in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fisher has an architecture degree from Cornell University and did all of his graduate work at Case Western Reserve University.