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Bruce Tomb was raised in a context of boatbuilding and the heritage of three generations of artists. In 1956 his parents built a California Modern home in Oakland, California, and it was growing up in this environment that inspired the pursuit of a formal education in Architecture from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California.
Tomb furthered his architectural studies with Cristiano Toraldo di Francia of Superstudio in Florence, Italy. Upon returning to San Francisco, he joined the office of Batey and Mack Architects as project architect, renderer, and collaborator with Mark Mack. It was the collaborations on neo-primitive furniture and his urban pioneering in a raw warehouse space that ultimately led to Tomb's design and development of the “Granite Cooktop.” The fixture as furniture, winner of Progressive Architecture magazine's 1984 Furniture Design Competition, was exhibited at the Whitney Museum's “High Styles” exhibition in 1985. This was the first in a series of experimental pieces of furniture investigating new relationships among people, objects, and inhabited space.
Interim Office Of Architecture, also known as the collaborative IOOA, was co-founded in 1984 by Bruce Tomb with John Randolph, blurred the boundaries that traditionally separate art, design, and architecture. Perhaps best known for the Latrine project at the Headlands Center for the Arts and the installation Gnomon, at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, IOOA's award winning installations, architecture, and furniture design have been exhibited and published extensively.
Tomb established the interdisciplinary practice, BRUCE TOMB, in 1998. Through both commissioned and experimental projects, he has been engaged in a wide range of projects investigating new relationships between people, sites, buildings, technology, and our environment. With particular interest in the working prototype as a model for research, the practice is defined by the pursuit of work that is peripheral to conventional architectural practice and yet central to architectural thought. Dense overlays of contemporary culture, antecedents and speculative futures are pursued through building prototype furniture, (site specific) installations, material and process experiments, product, and architectural projects.
Integral to the practice is the company, INFINITE FITTING, dedicated to the design and manufacture of hand finished sand-cast I F White Bronze, Silicon Bronze, Brass, Aluminum Basins and plumbing accessories. They are distributed throughout North America.
Bruce Tomb has taught at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, a 4th year Architectural studio and is an Adjunct Professor at California College of Arts in San Francisco/Oakland, teaching Architectural Design and Sculpture Studios, and has been teaching since 1989.
Exhibitions
2005 “Altered Practice,” American Institute of Architects, San Francisco, CA, group show.
2004 “AD 2004,” The Lab, San Francisco, CA, group show.
“New Work,” Oliver Art Center, California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA, group show.
Publications
2006 “Courtney Fink of Southern Exposure interviews Bruce Tomb, the owner of Valencia's Freedom Wall,” http://www.conceptualart.org/npr, July 29.
2005 “Ghosts of a Lost City,” San Francisco Chronicle, Insight Section F, Rebecca Solnit, July 3, p. 1.
“Police station turns into wall of free speech/Symbol of conformity turns into radical sounding board,” San Francisco Chronicle, Insight Section F, by Shadi Rahimi, July 3, pp. 1-3.
2003 “Best Cop Shop Conversion,” Guardian, July 30, pp. 84-85.
Awards
2006 Nominee for 2005 Precita Eyes Mural Awareness, Special Recognition, “Free
2003 San Francisco Bay Guardian, Best of the Bay, “Best Cop Shop Conversion.”
Lectures
2006 “Before and After Architecture,” Architecture Lecture Series, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo.
“Before and After Architecture,” Architecture Lecture Series, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
2003 “(de) Appropriation Project,” Curatorial Practice Seminar for Glen Helfand, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA.
2002 “Graffiti Re-appropriation,” lecture, Collideoscope, IDSA 2002 National Conference, Monterey, CA.
CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
A new prototype Console is exhibited in "New West Coast Design" at the Museum of Craft and Design (http://www.sfmcd.com/exhibt_current.htm), January 18, 2008-March 30, 2008. This freestanding basin will expand the current Infinite Fitting(http://www.infinitefitting.com) line.
In another collaboration with Chip Lord, Bruce is developing a temporary public art project called Zocalito for the City of San Jose's program: Who's on 1st/What's on 2nd, (http://www.sanjoseculture.org/?pid=4600), scheduled for August of 2008.
The Bath Pod / Hibbs-Gray Vertical Addition is scheduled for construction in the Spring of 2008. As a part of a new Master Bedroom suite, the Bath Pod is a prefabricated fiberglass composite bathroom cantilevered over the glass turret of an existing 50's modern home located in San Francisco. The Bath Pod will set precedence as the first architectural load bearing use of composites in San Francisco. To see a rendering of the project please pick up a copy of Architecture of the San Francisco Bay Area: A History and Guide by Mitchell Schwarzer. William Stout Publishers.(http://www.stoutbooks.com/cgi-bin/stoutbooks.cgi/71166.html?id=ENzAsVER).
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