Career
Educated at the Southern California Institute of Architecture(1987), he works in steel, stainless steel, bronze, copper, aluminum. Mixed media wood, plastic and glass. He has a long association with what has been called the “Los Angeles Avant Garde” award-winning architects Thom Mayne, Eric Owen Moss, Michael Rotondi, Craig Hodgetts, Frank Israel (b 1945, d 1996) and Frank Gehry.
He is the owner of Farrage & Company, co-owner of Nakao::Farrage Architects in Culver City, California, and is also the trustee of the Nathan H. Shapira Archives, in Southern California.
Founded in 1987, the first shop opened across the street from Service Civil International-Arc, on the corner of Berkeley and Nebraska Street, in Santa Monica. Wolf Prix of Cooperative(s) Himmelb(l)au, Ray Kappe, Robert Graham, Rem Koolhaas, Gary Paige, Daly – Genik, Susan Narduli, Charles and Elizabeth Lee, and artist Lee Jaffe soon followed.
The work has often been experimental, largely a collaboration with architects trying to break away from the limits of straight walls and flat surfaces characteristic of late Modernism. Tom Farrage continues designing and building on the micro and macro scales.
He explained, “Foreign me, metal work, which is my trade, and architecture, which is my avocation, are inseparable.
Making small objects of steel bronze, stainless steel, aluminum, copper, titanium, wood, concrete and glass is a rehearsal in the small for architecture in the large.” He further expressed the collaborative process of working with other architects is a special opportunity bound to yield results that are sometimes expected, sometimes surprising. Tom prefers to begin work at the embryonic stage of the design process, augmenting his own training and development. In his design realm, he thrives to bridge the gap between a sketch and spaces people inhabit.
Dean Factor, Smashbox Studios Stavros Merjos, H South I Productions Circa 2-k Entertainment PVUSD, Appleby Elementary School.
