After studies at the Ontario College of Art & Design in Toronto and experience at the Fifty Fingers Design Group (New York), Pentagram (UK) and Public Good Design and Communications (Toronto), Bruce Mau established his own studio in 1985. Following his early work on Zone 1|2 (precursors to his influential books S,M.L,XL with Rem Koolhaas and Massive Change with the Institute without Boundaries) he has continued to serve as design director of Zone Books and co-editor of its imprint Swerve Editions. From 1991 to 1993, he also served as Creative Director of I.D. magazine.
Under his creative leadership, Bruce Mau Design, Inc. has grown to a staff of more than thirty cross-disciplinary designers embracing a wide-ranging practice that has brought him to collaborate with some of the world’s leading cultural producers, entrepreneurs, writers, curators, academics and businesses. Within the studio, he founded a post-graduate design program the Institute without Boundaries, whose first alumni worked with him on Massive Change, an ambitious exhibition about the future of global design now touring internationally. Massive Change has also taken the form of a book, a series of public events, a website, on-line forum and radio program.
From 1996 to 1999 Bruce Mau was the Associate Cullinan Professor at Rice University School of Architecture in Houston. He has also been a thesis advisor at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Architecture, Landscape & Design; artist in residence at California Institute of the Arts; and a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. He has lectured extensively throughout North America and Europe, and currently serves on the International Advisory Committee of the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio.
In addition, Bruce is an Honorary Fellow of the Ontario College of Art and Design and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art. He was awarded the Chrysler Award for Design Innovation in 1998, and the Toronto Arts Award for Architecture and Design in 1999. In 2001 he received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from the Emily Carr Institute of Art + Design.
