Bruce Burdick

In 2000 the Burdicks dissolved their firm and dedicated themselves to serious travel. They split their time between a home in San Francisco and a house they designed with longtime associate Bruce Lightbody at Sea Ranch on the California coast.

In 1983 Burdick married Susan K. Burdick, who became his design and business partner.

In that same year, Burdick designed the Burdick Group desk for Herman Miller. Supported by aluminum beams and pedestals, the components can be rearranged to put tools and resources within easy reach. As Burdick put it, "What I wanted was a desk that was responsive to the way an individual works . . . a desk that a designer could specify for 20 different people, with each one being different." Time magazine reporter Wolf van Eckardt pronounced it one of the five best industrial designs of 1981. It was Gordon Gecko's desk in the 1987 film Wall Street.

In 1980, Burdick purchased a former piano warehouse at 35 South Park, San Francisco. The building accommodated a changing cast of employees and a shop where models and prototypes were built.

The Burdick Group's first major exhibition opened in 1976: "Food for Life," a permanent exhibition on nutrition for the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. Via computers, visitors related exhibit content to their own health. From this first exhibit onward Burdick strove to engage visitors with computer interactions. At that time "computer" meant mainframe. Burdick took a course in computer literacy at Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science to understand how computers might turn a visitor's passive experience into an active one.

He founded the department of Environmental Design at the Art Center College of Design in 1971 and directed it through 1975. While there he served as the client liaison for the design and construction of Craig Ellwood's canyon-spanning Bridge Building. His elder daughter Anne Burdick teaches Media Design at the Art Center. In 1970 he founded the Burdick Group design firm in Los Angeles.

After graduating from Art Center in 1961 he worked in the Los Angeles design firms of John Follis and Herb Rosenthal.

Bruce Burdick (1933–2021) was an American designer and founder of the Burdick Group. He is known for The Burdick Group modular desk system, and designing various museum exhibits around the world, including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame exhibit space.