(San Francisco) In 2022, Phifer was elected as a lifetime member to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters. That year, his Hudson Valley House II won an Architecture Honor Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA. In 2020, Phifer's expansion of
Glenstone won a National Honor Award from the
American Institute of Architects and the "Best in Competition" Award from the New York Chapter of the AIA. In 2020, Phifer's
Corning Museum of Glass expansion won a National Honor Award for Interior Architecture from the AIA. The project also won an Merit Award for Architecture from the New York Chapter of the AIA in 2016. In 2013, Phifer was awarded the Architecture Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Phifer was also elected as an Academician for the
National Academy of Design in 2012. In 2011, Phifer received a Fellowship from the American Institute of Architects. The
North Carolina Museum of Art, received a National Honor Award from the AIA in 2011. In 2010, the Raymond and Susan Brochstein Pavilion received a National Honor Award from the AIA and an Honor Award from the American Academy of Landscape Architecture. In 2009, he received a Research and Development Award from
Architect magazine for his international competition-winning design for New York City's City Lights light fixture. That year, he received National Honor Awards from the AIA for both Steelcase and Taghkanic House. Phifer received the
Rome Prize in Architecture from the American Academy in Rome in 1995, and was honored with a
residency the following year at the Academy's campus. The
San Francisco Chronicle's architecture critic John King described Phifer as "a master of meticulous modernism who has won praise for gem-like private homes and such cultural facilities as [the 2015] addition to the
Corning Museum of Glass", but criticized
222 Second Street (completed by
Tishman Speyer in 2016) as "designed and built by New Yorkers" without taking the building's San Francisco surroundings into account. == Works ==