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.