Thomas Kosbau is Founder and Principal Architect of ORE Design and Technology, based in Brooklyn, New York. ORE was founded as a holistic design firm, reaching beyond its foundational architectural services to create new technologies and products that can pave the way for a better future. ORE specializes in lateral thinking with common technologies and materials.

Through his work at ORE, Kosbau strives to uncover, develop and refine unrealized creative potentials embedded in scientific research, technological innovation, and the natural world. ORE’s architectural practice specializes in both high-end residential and commercial design, where he has incorporated proprietary architectural and technological systems that push the boundaries of today’s urban typology. His built work includes the DeKalb Market, Riverpark Farm, Square Roots (a terrestrial food system designed for Mars colonization) and GrowNYC’s community food education center called Project Farmhouse.  Dekalb Market won the 2012 NYC Design award and the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s “Building Brooklyn Award,” the Riverpark Farm has won the Municipal Arts Society of New York’s “City Livability Award”, an Architizer “A+” award and was the Financial Times/Citigroup Ingenuity Award runner-up for revolutionary civic infrastructural design.

ORE’s forward leaning projects have been receiving accolades as well. ORE took first place in the IIDA Awards competition with a proposal to replace Incheon, Korea’s infrastructure of conventional asphalt roads with organically grown sandstone streets. As a student Kosbau won first place in RIBA’s 2002 International Energy Revolution competition with his proposal for the first building powered by Hydrogen producing algae panels.

Kosbau took first place in the California AIA “Drylands Competition” with a proposal to re-engineer the Los Angeles River into a zero-energy desalination system. Kosbau recently won design: retail’s 40 under 40 award for his entrepreneurial  incubator work in urban neighborhoods with historically high-unemployment rates. He is a four-time nominee for the Smithsonian National Design Award for Architecture.