Born in La Jolla, California in 1970, Tom Wiscombe is an architect living in Los Angeles. He is founder and principal of Tom Wiscombe Architecture, an internationally recognized design practice. His work stands out in terms of its synthesis of form, pattern, color, and technology into singular, irreducible constructions.
Wiscombe has developed an international reputation through winning competition entries, exhibitions of work at major cultural institutions, and publications worldwide. Wiscombe recently won second place in the international competition for the Kinmen Passenger Service Center, Taiwan. In 2013, Wiscombe began planning and design of the Old Bank District Museum (OBDM) with Gilmore Associates, the developer known for re-vitalizing downtown Los Angeles. In 2012, Wiscombe, was part of the joint design team organized by Morphosis to compete for the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, which received second prize. In 2011, Wiscombe won first place in two competitions for the 2013 Chinese National Games, including a 123,000 square meter Civic Sports Center and a 5,000 seat Judo Arena in Shenyang. In 2011, Wiscombe was also hired to design the Beijing National Hotel by the Interior Ministry of China, which features 1,500 rooms and a 10,000 square meter internal rainforest.
His work is part of the permanent collection of the FRAC Centre Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, MoMA San Francisco, and MoMA New York. 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 is a senior faculty member at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He teaches design in the M.Arch. II and ESTm programs and is Applied Studies Coordinator, in charge of curriculum building and faculty recruitment. Wiscombe also currently teaches Advanced Research studios as Visiting Professor at PennDesign. In the Fall of 2012, Wiscombe held the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Assistant Professorship at Yale University.
Previously, Wiscombe worked for Coop Himmelb(l)au, where he was the right hand of Principal Wolf Prix for over 10 years. He was responsible for multiple international projects and large project teams from competition through realization. Notably, he was Chief Designer for the UFA Cinema Center, Dresden, BMW Welt, Munich, and the Lyon Museum of Confluences, known as three of the most important works of contemporary architecture.
Tom began his career as an intern at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center, where his father is Chief Scientist.
Tom Wiscombe
