KPS Group Inc. has named Donald Simpson president and Hugh Thornton chairman of the board. The Birmingham-based architecture and design firm announced the changes in early March. The transition represents the third generation of leadership since the firm’s founding in 1965.
Gray Plosser, who has held the role of president and CEO since 1984, will continue his professional practice as senior principal at KPS.
Both Simpson and Thornton are graduates of Auburn University and both have spent their careers at KPS, where they have long been principals in the firm.
Other key firm members are Donna Bowling, director of interiors, and Kristine Harding, managing principal of the firm’s Huntsville office who was named a Fellow in the American Institute of Architects College of Fellows in 2018.
KPS provides architecture, interior design and planning services throughout the Southeast. The firm’s practice specialties include corporate and commercial, education, housing and hospitality, healthcare, aviation, cultural, institutional facilities, and community and urban planning.
Among some of its well-known projects in Alabama are H.M. Comer Hall at the University of Alabama, Bakers Row on the west edge of Railroad Park in Birmingham, Birmingham Shuttlesworth International Airport’s terminal modernization and expansion, the Pizitz Building in downtown Birmingham and more.
