Growing up in 1960s Berkeley, California, Mavis Wiggins was both an academic and an artist. After taking courses at the University of California, Berkeley during high school, she moved to New York City to attend Pratt Institute, but was initially not interested in interior design. “I was more interested in photography and fine art,” says the recently retired chief executive of TPG Architecture. He built a five-decade career in interior architecture and workplace design for some of the industry’s most influential design firms.
Wiggins, 72, cites her mother’s knack for decorating the family home and the meticulous architectural drawings her father created in high school as guiding her toward interior design. The choice was ultimately based on the pragmatism of his father, a longshoreman. “I needed to make money,” Wiggins says, “and I thought it might be the safest way.”
But Wiggins did more with his career than pay his bills. He shaped high-profile corporate and foundation spaces with a client-centered minimalist design philosophy, while mentoring rising design professionals and driving more diversified access to the field. With many accolades, his influence grew. In 2020, Wiggins won Best Interior Designer for Interior Design: Corporate Interiors. She was also named in 2021 to the College of Fellows of the International Association of Interior Design and in 2022 she was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. “As an industry, we are all better because of Mavis,” says Cheryl Durst, executive vice president and CEO of the International Association of Interior Design. “She is a shaper of places and people, a gifted designer, a consummate storyteller and the kindest and most serene of human souls.”
intrusion
Wiggins was initially out of his comfort zone when he embarked on tenant improvements. Eventually, “I fell in love with it when I realized what you could do with space,” he says, “and how you could affect space.”
Wiggins’ first job out of college was with Environment Planning, a small firm run by Archibald Kaplan in New York City in the mid-1970s. At a time when “everything was hand-drawn,” he says, he drafted floor plans for clients and real estate brokers, learning the precision of square footage and layouts.
After a year, Wiggins joined HOK’s New York City office, where he worked on early assignments, including one for Marriott Corp. in Bethesda, Maryland with senior designers. It wasn’t long before he embarked on a solo mission to Portland, Oregon to work with an insurance company. Sojourns followed with designer Stanley Felderman and later with larger firms such as KPF, HLW and Gensler.
But when a young black woman entered the profession in the 1970s, navigating overtly hostile workplaces, sometimes smeared with racist graffiti, was a challenge. “When I arrived, suddenly everything went very quiet,” he says.
Wiggins still insisted on visiting sites to answer questions. This, along with his attention to detail, earned him the respect of colleagues. “I learned to keep my head up and keep moving,” she says. “You had to have a pretty thick skin to get through some of those early projects.”
As he built a portfolio and gained more responsibility, attitudes changed. “When company directors recognize you and allow you to have those opportunities,” says Wiggins, “then that breaks down some of the barriers … not all, but to some extent.”
As Wiggins rose to senior design positions, particularly in the mid-1990s at HLW, she honed a distinctive approach based on simplicity and purpose, a style seeded by studies at Pratt with Joe D’Urso, a prominent interior designer and design professor who developed her eye for eliminating what she calls “arbitrary embellishment.”
“When I arrived, suddenly everything went very quiet.”
—Mavis Wiggins, speaking about early-career racism
For Wiggins, every movement in a space must have a reason. “I like to keep it clean and clear, and I want to make sure that the spaces that are created there are things that the company really needs to grow as a company and [that] it’s useful for your staff,” he says.
For a Rockefeller Foundation project in the mid-1990s, Wiggins met with scientists and staff working in the fields of biotechnology and sustainability. He wanted the environment to reflect his mission. Glass offices were still rare, so Wiggins designed 5-foot-wide barn doors that could stay open most of the time, bringing daylight from private offices into open work areas. The scleron windows above the doors spread light deeper into the floor. Each wood-framed barn door was inlaid with reclaimed architectural copper that he pulled from scrap yards. “Everything was twisted and bent,” he says, but once it was flattened and installed, “every door was unique because of that.”
HBO’s Santa Monica, Calif. headquarters, developed in the late 1990s while at HLW, proved to be another challenge. The five-story project featured atrium spaces and bridges connecting executives and staff. Over the course of two floors, he had corridors 50 feet long to tackle. After noticing a New York City sidewalk where people had carved graffiti into the concrete, he proposed a similar concrete floor that HBO employees could mark “to engage the staff,” he says. HR staff observers were on hand “just to make sure no one was misbehaving,” says Wiggins, but the result was “a really good way to introduce that space.”
At TPG, Wiggins completed DZ Bank’s clean, bright and well-detailed New York headquarters in 2022.
Photo by Eric Laignel, courtesy of TPG Architecture
Lead by listening
In 2010, Wiggins joined TPG Architecture, where he later completed notable projects such as the DZ Bank headquarters in New York. TPG’s comprehensive architecture and interior design efforts moved the German bank into a bright and well-detailed space at One Vanderbilt Tower.
Wiggins also honed his mentoring and leadership skills at TPG. The younger staff appreciate that he “leads them gently,” he says. When she became design director, Wiggins worked to keep that reciprocity intact. “It’s top-down, bottom-up, you learn from each other,” he says. “This will give you the best end result.”
Ricardo Nabholz, TPG managing partner and studio creative director, worked on more than 30 projects with Wiggins. He called her an exceptional designer, listener and communicator. “He has an uncanny ability to quickly get to the heart of what a client or project really needs,” he says, “and then take both the client and the team on that journey of understanding.”
Wiggins, who retired in January 2025, still speaks to design students and emerging professionals, whom she encourages to be curious and collaborative. He hopes to focus more on youth from underprivileged neighborhoods who might not otherwise be exposed to design as a career. He continues to consult with TPG, including on a Chicago office project for client Citadel LLC, the investment management firm. Wiggins also serves on Pratt’s advisory board. “I don’t think creatives ever retreat from their passion. However, that passion can transform or develop in other ways,” he says. “I intend to keep my foot on the pedal by exposing young people to the design and architecture industry.”
