Mar. 29, Tom Kundig, “Recent Work”

Tom Kundig, a Seattle-based architect with Olson Kundig Architects, is celebrated for crafting kinetic houses fitted with gears, wheels and pulleys and various other devices that open up structures to dramatic natural settings. He has won more than 50 awards, including top honors from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and his firm, formerly Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects, won a 2009 AIA Honor Award for Firm of the Year. In 2009 alone, his work was published in the New York Times Magazine, Metropolitan Home and Architectural Record.

The non-stop pace of his current practice is rooted, somewhat paradoxically, in a long, freezing cold night spent trapped on the north face of a mountain when Kundig was a 20-year-old architecture student at the University of Washington. “To this day I can relive that night’s cycle of sunset, night sky, and sunrise with all of its meaning. It was a visceral awakening for me and my place in the world,” Kundig wrote in the preface to his monograph Tom Kundig: Houses (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006).

Kundig’s keen attention to both minute detail and big picture context plays out in designs that strike a balance between raw and refined. Case in point: an early work, the Brain Studio in Seattle (1998-2001), where rugged concrete walls are juxtaposed with honey-colored hardwood floors and a warm, book-lined space opens to the outdoors via large steel-case windows. A loft constructed of steel plates welded and folded into origami structure, the fireman’s pole egress from the loft, a special sentry window for the client’s hound dog Oscar, and naked light bulbs suspended from motorized industrial pulleys are typical of the idiosyncratic flourishes that Kundig develops in partnership with his clients. Other iconic residences include the Delta Shelter and Rolling Huts in Mazama, Wash.; Chicken Point Cabin in Hayden Lake, Idaho; and Kundig’s own home, Hot Rod House, in Seattle.

Recently Kundig has taken on larger scale urban projects such as the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, Idaho; the T Bailey Offices in Anacortes, Wash.; and two large hotel and mixed-use projects in downtown Seattle. Though acclaim has brought in larger projects, Kundig continues to explore the personal realm in residential projects on all scales, from a 25-foot by 25-foot cabin retreat in Skyomimsh, Wash., to a glass, steel and concrete-block box that floats in the Idaho desert.

Olson Kundig Architects has been shortlisted as a finalist in the Fallingwater Architectural Design Competition of Ideas for on-site educational housing. Kundig also garnered two Merit Awards in the 11th annual Residential Architect Design Awards. His single-room Salt Spring Island Cabin in Salt Spring, British Columbia, won in the Architectural Design Detail category, and his steel and concrete Montecito Residence, located in the fire-prone Toro Canyon area near Santa Barbara, Calif., won in the category for custom homes of more than 3,000 square feet.

Kundig, whose work encompasses residential, commercial and institutional and is located around the world, is deeply engaged with questions of shelter and context. His March 29 lecture, "Recent Work," will explore how his work seeks to define modern shelter, from cabins to high-rises, rural sites to city streetscapes.

Kundig's lecture, which honors the memory of William F. Pendergrass, is sponsored by Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates.

Kundig will be the fall 2010 John G. Williams Distinguished Professor at the Fay Jones School of Architecture.

This home on Mercer Island utilizes the elemental natures of concrete, steel and glass to create a family refuge. A bent plate steel staircase descends into an open plan, double-height living space, which is dominated by an immense concrete fireplace and chimney (in the living room) and a massive black granite-covered island (in the kitchen).
Photo by Tim Bies, courtesy of Olson Kundig Architects.