Wampler received his B.S. in Architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1963 and a M.A.U.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1964. He has been on the MIT faculty since 1970, teaching a studio and an "international workshop" each semester. He has also taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Massachusetts College of Art, Boston Architectural Center, University of Sydney, and University of California, Berkeley.

In addition to teaching, Wampler runs a small architectural office. His interests are in design: the understanding and designing of the space between buildings as well as buildings that can respond to people's needs. He has a substantial number of projects built.

His work has won several awards, the most recent from the New England Regional Council for Excellence in Architecture for the Angela Westover House. Wampler was elected to the College of Fellows of the AIA, and in 1999 he received the Distinguished Professor Award from the ACSA.

Wampler's articles and buildings have been published in a number of architectural magazines. These include: "La Puntilla," Progressive Architecture; "L'Emprette," L'Architecture D'Aujourd'hui, May/June 1975; "Boston Architecture", Andrea Leers and Alex Krieger, A&U, V. 222, March, 1989; "Thinking the City" exhibition; "Designing for Special Populations," Architecture, January, 1987; "A Village in a House," Space and Society, June 1984. He also authored a book in 1976, All Their Own, People and the Places They Build, the Schenkman Publishing Company, Cambridge, MA, 1976.

He recently exhibited his work of the last twenty five years at MIT entitled "Open Strings for e - Search on the Journey." In a review of the exhibition by Robert Campbell referred to Wampler as "The Walt Whitman of Architects."