Building a Reputation on Diversity : Versatility: Steven Lombardi’s desire to work on myriad designs keeps him from a single identity, but it also fuels his creativity.

Since departing the corporate architecture scene in the mid-1980s, architect-designer Steven Lombardi has carved out his own broader niche.

Going it solo, surviving mostly on commissions he gets through word of mouth, Lombardi has built a reputation on many design fronts: homes, offices, lighting fixtures, stage sets, retail shops.

For Lombardi, 37, the many disciplines feed off each other, and the variety of challenges fires his mind with fresh ideas.

Lombardi’s artistic range may have prevented him from establishing a strong identity in any single area, but it has kept him involved with an intriguing array of projects.

In the same afternoon, he can show you a sensitive remodeling of a 1950s Point Loma house originally designed by San Diego architect John Reed--a one-time associate of Frank Lloyd Wright disciple Sim Bruce Richards--or he can pull out sketches of his design of the Jay Display store in Kearny Mesa, or he can explain an environmental installation he has in mind for a site along the Northern California coast--a series of fluorescent light tubes that would define the contours of the rugged topography at night for passing motorists.

“Look across the board at the things I’ve done, and it looks like 30 different people,” Lombardi said last week in an interview in the tiny living room of his Ocean Beach home. His lighting fixtures are mounted on walls, architectural models rest on most available surfaces and a bright red leather bench he designed for a Los Angeles restaurant dominates one corner, its double backrests flaring against a white wall.

“The only thing that keeps my motor running is constantly attacking new areas,” Lombardi said. “I’d hate to be an architect just doing commercial or residential work for the rest of my life.”

Lombardi’s thoughts tend to travel on a philosophical plane. He is concerned not only with materials, forms and the users of what he produces, but with multiple layers of meaning. Projects with greater leeway for his cerebral musings seem to bring him the most satisfaction.

“One of the most creative things I did was probably for the dance company,” Lombardi said, referring to two stage sets he designed for Jazz Unlimited, the San Diego dance troupe. “They had to do with architecture, but also with moving the dancers through space, with the interaction between sculpture and art.”

In 1988, Lombardi collaborated with Jazz Unlimited director Patricia Rincon on a set for a dance titled “Out of Bounds” which explored the experience of being in jail. Lombardi created a cube frame pierced with 35-foot wooden spears. A dancer moved in and out of the space, threatened by the lances, Lombardi’s sculptural depiction of dark, foreboding interior emotions.

Lombardi is now at work on a set for “Out of Bounds II,” which will be presented later this year.

Although Lombardi seems most satisfied doing design work that leaves maximum room for his own creative instincts, it is his lighting fixtures--which serve the most practical of purposes--that have brought him some international recognition.

To date, “Filicudara,” Lombardi’s angular aluminum wall sconce, introduced by the Italian company Artemide in 1987, has sold more than 10,000 units. During one month in the last quarter of 1990, “Filicudara” sold 600 units, quite respectable for the first product from a young designer. Artemide is moving ahead with plans to release the follow-up to “Filicudara,” another aluminum lighting fixture.

But Lombardi is not content to pursue just one type of lighting design. To him, the pieces he creates for Artemide are in the mass-produced, machine mode. He has a pastoral side, too, the side that contemplates environmental installations, and that dreams up more organic lighting fixtures, such as a new piece consisting of a candle mounted on a pie-slice piece of birch, pierced by a spindly kiwi branch.

“This is natural, organic, primitive lighting as opposed to the high-tech things for Artemide,” Lombardi explained. “This is handmade versus mass produced.” Lombardi fabricates the pieces himself and distributes them through a handful of Southern California showrooms, including Modern Living on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

Lombardi began his design education at the New York Institute of Technology and earned a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCIARCH) in Santa Monica. He attributes his multidisciplinary career to the diverse makeup of the SCIARCH faculty, including such people as lighting designer Ron Rezek, architect and SCIARCH founder Ray Kappe and cutting edge architects Eric Owen Moss, Thom Mayne and Michael Rotondi.

“They taught me that design is general, as opposed to specific,” Lombardi said. “If I were to make a generalization, the generalization is that design is a process, and the process comes from people who are involved not just in architecture, but in anything from environment-specific site installations to lighting to furniture. What was valuable to me was to have a faculty that explored many design avenues as opposed to just an architectural avenue.”

When he graduated from SCIARCH in 1979, Lombardi went to work for architect William Pereira’s office in Los Angeles, where he helped develop a master plan for a new city in Persian Gulf nation of Qatar, among other projects.

He moved to San Diego in 1982, and worked briefly for idiosyncratic local artist-architect Tom Grondona, who designed the whacked-out, cartoonish Claudia’s, the cinnamon roll shop in Horton Plaza. In fact, when Lombardi moved on to Pacific Associates Planners & Architects, he designed the second Claudia’s in North County Fair shopping center in Escondido, a more restrained environment than Grondona’s original.

At PAPA, Lombardi contributed to Chuck Slert and Randy Dalrymple’s design of the award-winning Escondido City Hall, and during the mid-1980s, at BSHA, he worked on corporate projects including Slert’s Rio Vista Towers in Mission Valley.

With a number of buildings to his credit, and new home designs on the boards, Lombardi is finding a direction in his architecture.

“I’m trying to simplify, to make simple spaces, to deal with light and simple economics,” said Lombardi, who has achieved some stunning results for clients with limited budgets. “I try not to deal with color too much. Claudia’s got out of control. I like the simplicity of an Eastern (Japanese) point of view.”

The remodeling he has planned for his own Ocean Beach home and a new home he is designing both appear from the exterior as a series of simple cubes. But these are only the building blocks for dramas to be created within by inventive, flowing floor plans and skylights tucked along seams between walls and roofs to wash interior spaces with natural light.

Although Lombardi says he isn’t getting rich as a solo act, he keeps busy, and says the bigger money that can be made from larger projects isn’t important to him. But he would like to tackle larger projects, mainly for the opportunity to address bigger social issues.

“That’s the dilemma, how to deal with larger work,” he said. “I hope to associate with larger firms in the future to do some work like that.”