Tom O’Brien
Project Designer
Tom O’Brien joined MetroStudio in January 2024 after earning his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and a M. Arch from Tulane. He relays that he “came to architecture a bit later in life,” starting graduate school in the fall of 2020. Before coming to MetroStudio he worked as an intern with Brian Gille Architects, for a fine art printing press in New York, with local artists here in New Orleans, and was also a bartender.
Tom comes from a fine art background and will always love art but feels that architecture scratches an itch that art does not. “It uses the analytical part of my brain to solve real problems that effect individuals and communities alike, from the detail of a small screw to the urban planning of a city.” For this reason, he really enjoyed the opportunities for community engagement while at Tulane, especially the variety of projects while working with the Small Center. One of those small center projects included the redesign of the John Thompson Legacy Center on St. Bernard Ave. in New Orleans.
Currently, Tom is part of the MetroStudio team working on the adaptive reuse and renovation of a 23,183 SqFt warehouse in the CBD. In the future, he would love the opportunity to work on a library. “Libraries are all almost programmatically identical but can truly take any form: wide open spaces, cloistered reading nooks, private offices, classrooms. Plus, who doesn’t love spending time in a library?”
In the next 5-10 years, he hopes to be licensed and to take on more of a leadership role at MetroStudio by being the Lead Architect on a variety of important projects.