His projects in Southern California such as the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant are often seen in Hollywood films and television shows such as Star Trek Next Generation as part of Starfleet Academy.

[3] In 1965, the Los Angeles-based large, multi-service architectural and engineering firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson & Mendenhall (DMJM) offered Cesar Pelli, who had also worked at Saarinen, a position as their director of design.

DMJM had hired Pelli and Lumsden to break with orthodox Modernism, but keeping in mind stringent time and money constraints, and working for many clients who were ambivalent about architectural design.

Pelli took the initial lead in designing the Medical Plaza, which was done while Lumsden was assigned to rapid transit work at a separate office within DMJM.

Lumsden called the new design system, "non-directional, non-gravitational," and it undid the tripartite stacking seen on towers since the time of Louis Sullivan.

Many remained unbuilt, including the Beverly Hills Hotel (1973), whose renderings depict full-length cylinders articulating various interior functions rolling out of an extended horizontal tower, everything within a silver mirrored skin.

He was selected as a member of the Silver Group and the LA12 (twelve distinguished architects including John Lautner, Craig Elwood, Frank Gehry, Cesar Pelli and Ray Kappe, organized by California State University, Pomona in 1976).

[4] In 1979, he was invited by Philip Johnson and Arthur Drexler as one of six internationally recognized architects including Michael Graves, Robert A. M. Stern and James Wines, to create a facade design for The Museum of Modern Art's "Buildings for Best Products" exhibition.

Utilizing the latest glass technology to sculptural ends, Lumsden's design was lauded in Drexler's press release as "perhaps the most astonishing of the six."

Lumsden wrote: "The Best showroom project continues to investigate an architectural vocabulary I have used for several years: the membrane aesthetic; the extruded facade; intersecting forms; and reversed curves.

[8] By the general consent of colleagues and critics ranging from intensely opinionated minds like Britain's Charles Jencks,[9] Reyner Banham and Esther McCoy, to practicing peers like Lou Naidorf, director of design for Welton Becket Associates, Lumsden is one of the best mainstream modernists in America, or anywhere.