BRUCE LITTLEHORN . DESIGNER + PARTNER . URBANDWELLERS
"our engineering reflects the needs of people–not a criterion for mass production"
Bruce Littlehorn grew up in a family who loves everything mechanical—the creation of a fully functioning roller-coaster in his own backyard was an every day kind of event for a boy growing up in the Littlehorn household. When Bruce was not yet out of high school, he joined his father in the family metal fabrication business, and learned how to weld and form, forge and cut metal. They built custom fireplaces, and spiral staircases, copper family crests and fulfilled public fabrication commissions, such as the creation of the metal cornices found atop of the Buena Vista, Colorado, Courthouse. These early commissions gave Bruce an early and in-depth understanding of the role customization plays in environments that demand an alternative to automated product engineering. He began to ask at this early age, how do requirements drive the design of a successful project?
After high school, Bruce became a Journeyman in the Sheet Metal Union, and began a 20-year career as an engineer that would make requirements driven design a key core competency. In the next two decades, Bruce built extremely technical creations for the defense industry, for public spaces and private industry: Computer cabinets and housings for sensitive electronic equipment for Boeing Industries, escalator ramps for Denver’s Coors Field, DIA and Las Vegas Airport, and specialized precision refrigeration cabinetry for over 100 Ihops restaurants across the US—which included fabrications of large industrial kitchen equipment, chef counters, and kitchen architecture.
Early in his career, in the 1980’s, Bruce questioned the tools available for requirements driven design fabrication—pencils and calculators were all that was used to master extremely complex fabrication decisions. Bruce knew there had to be an alternative to the “one chance to get it right” fabrication modality. In the spirit of hands-on entrepreneurialism, Bruce coded one of the first software applications to create an AutoCAD based parametric drawing program designed to automate the process of component building. It’s a software program still in use today, for the same fabrication shop he worked for in the early days of his career.
In 2002, Bruce began to produce furniture for urban spaces inspired by the requirements driven design models that had shaped his commercial successes. His training in documenting requirements became a springboard for understanding the design and engineering excesses and flaws that live covertly in urban homes and spaces. Bruce’s life and business partner, Larry, together created a series of furniture pieces designed for the urban home. Their designs were deeply committed to a synergistic vision of urban living. Bruce and Larry’s engineering and design goal: create concepts for the urban home and work space that open the door to engineering that reflects the needs of people rather than a criterion for mass production, with design and engineering that has the everyday experiences of people and their desire to interact with the world more fully, in mind. For Bruce, it’s engineering that embraces new knowledge about our Earth and natural resources, and our inner lives. It’s engineering that empowers the desires of the people who desire homes that are as dynamic as the lives they lead.