Tom Wiscombe
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Tom Wiscombe (born April 4, 1970,
La Jolla La Jolla ( , ) is a hilly, seaside neighborhood within the city of San Diego, California, United States, occupying of curving coastline along the Pacific Ocean. The population reported in the 2010 census was 46,781. La Jolla is surrounded on ...
,
California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
) is an American
architect An architect is a person who plans, designs and oversees the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to provide services in connection with the design of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the buildings that h ...
based in
Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...
, California. He is the Principal and Founder of Tom Wiscombe Architecture (TWA). Consisting primarily of unbuilt projects, Wiscombe’s work is known for its massing, graphic qualities, and inventiveness, all informed by contemporary ecological thought. His recently released monograph Objects Models Worlds covers his practice and ideas. He was the Chair of the Undergraduate Program at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc), where he taught for over 15 years.


Career

Wiscombe began his career as an intern at
NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...
's Goddard Spaceflight Center, where his father Warren Wiscombe was a Chief Scientist. He completed his B.A. in Architecture at
UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant uni ...
in 1992 and his master's degree at
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...
in 1999. Between degrees, from 1993-1998, Wiscombe joined
Coop Himmelb(l)au Coop Himmelb(l)au (A pun meaning ''Coop Sky Building'' and ''Coop Sky Blue'') is an architecture, urban planning, design, and art firm founded by Wolf D. Prix, Helmut Swiczinsky, and Michael Holzer in Vienna, Austria in 1968. History Coop Him ...
, where he became Design Architect for Principal Wolf Prix. During this time, he designed and built the UFA Cinema Center, Dresden. In 2001, after teaching for 2 years at SCI-Arc under Director Neil Denari, he returned to Coop Himmelb(l)au as Chief Designer and Project Partner to lead several international projects. These include BMW Welt, Munich, the Lyon Musée des Confluences, and the Akron Art Museum,. In 2006, he established his practice in Los Angeles and returned to SCI-Arc. In 2015, Wiscombe assumed the role of Chair of the B.Arch. Program, which he has reshaped to include
Liberal Arts program
intended to disrupt and fuel design thinking. He also hosts a Liberal Arts Masterclass series, intended to bringing intellectual leaders of our time to engage faculty and students. Wiscombe has taught Advanced Research studios as Visiting Professor at U. Penn (PennDesign) since 2013, held the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship at Yale University in 2012, and was the UC Berkeley Esherick Chair in 2005. Wiscombe has developed an international reputation through winning competition entries, lectures, exhibitions, and writings. Early in his career, in 2003, Wiscombe won the MoMA/ P.S.1 Young Architect’s award, realizing it in the P.S.1 courtyard to critical acclaim. In 2011, Wiscombe won first place in two competitions for the 2013 Chinese National Games, including a Civic Sports Center and a Judo Arena in Shenyang, and was hired to design the Beijing National Hotel by the Interior Ministry of China. In 2014, Wiscombe won second prize in the international competition for th
Kinmen Passenger Service Center
Taiwan. In 2014, Wiscombe began planning and design o
The Main Museum of Los Angeles Art
with Tom Gilmore, the developer known for leading the re-vitalization of downtown Los Angeles. This project engages the deep basements and rooftops of four historical buildings, creating a new form of museum for the art of L.A. In 2016, Wiscombe won, together with Orange Barrel Media and MOCA, th
West Hollywood Sunset Spectacular billboard
This project operates as both a contemporar
'belltower'
and public space, and combines site-specific art and interactive content with commercial advertising. In 2018, Wiscombe, together with EYRC Architects, designed the concept fo

for Blockchains, LLC on their property in Sparks, Nevada. This project envisions a new world built on blockchain technology, allowing for new forms of collaboration, sustainability, and democracy. In 2019 construction began on Wiscombe’s Dark Chalet, located on Summit Powder Mountain, for the founder of the largest independent solar power developer in the United States. The project is 362% energy positive, using breakthrough residential solar technology. The Dark Chalet received the 2020 AIA LA Next LA Honor Award in the Single-Family Residential category. Wiscombe’s, Orange Barrel Media Headquarters project, a proposed expansion to Orange Barrel Media’s office space in Columbus, Ohio, also received a Merit Award in the Commercial/Mixed-Use category. The Flat Out Large, a research project completed in 2021, takes on the housing and energy crises of Los Angeles, with a new form of urbanism based on the ecological ideas of large scale indoor-outdoor spaces, shade, adaptive re-use, and inner-city solar fields.


Recognition

Wiscombe’s work is part of the permanent collections of the FRAC Centre Orleans, the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA San Francisco, and MoMA New York. Wiscombe won AIA Design Awards for the Kinmen Passenger Service Center in 2014 and the Main Museum in 2015. ICON Magazine, in its May 2009 issue, named Wiscombe one of the “top 20 architects in the world who are making the future and transforming the way we work”. Wiscombe has been accused of exploiting students and employees. He posted and subsequently removed a "non-apology" apology on Instagram.


Selected Lectures and Texts


Lectures


"Duel + Duet: Patrik Schumacher and Tom Wiscombe in conversation"
SCI-Arc Lecture Series (2016)
"Objects, Containers, Worlds"
UCLA A.UD Lecture Series (2016)
"Near Figuration and Strange Containers"
Knowlton School OSU Baumer Lecture Series (2015)


Texts


"Tom Wiscombe Interviewed by Zachary Tate Porter"
SCI-Arc Offramp (2016)
"The Object Turn: A Conversation"
LOG #33 (2015)
"Towards a Flat Ontology of Architecture"
PROJECT Issue 3 (2014)
"Interview: Subdivisions, Squishing and Objects in Objects"
suckerPUNCH (2013)


References


External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Wiscombe, Tom 1970 births Living people 20th-century American architects UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design alumni UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture alumni 21st-century American architects People from La Jolla, San Diego