Joe Pfeiffer Homestead in Grand Teton National Park near Moose, Wyoming
“At its core, residential architecture is shelter. It’s the most primitive, basic need, right after food.”
Tom Kundig’s (b. 1954) designs successfully combine art, craft, and the human experience of space. Kundig’s award-winning houses are celebrated for their rugged yet elegant and welcoming style. He is internationally recognized for his big American West landscape sensibility.
Kundig is known for holding to a tradition of art fabrication; integration of elegant architecture with the exploration and reinvention of parts of architecture, such as doors, windows, or stairs; and for his use of kinetic architectural elements.
To date, Kundig has been awarded a total of twenty-six AIA awards, including four recent National AIA awards (for The Brain, Chicken Point Cabin, Delta Shelter, and Tye River Cabin). A monograph on the work of his firm, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects: Architecture, Art, and Craft, was published in 2001 by Monacelli Press, and in 2006, Princeton Architectural Press released Tom Kundig: Houses. Kundig earned his undergraduate and graduate architecture degrees from the University of Washington. He is a recipient of a 2007 Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Tom Kundig identifies how the Northwest landscape informs his architecture, yet how good design can transcend regional boundaries. How does that dynamic tension between vernacular of a region and the “playfulness” he is known for coexist? “Whether you’re from the Northwest, Southwest, Australia, or Europe, you find a common thread of problem solving the idiosyncratic situation of a place. That place may be desert, forest, mountains, or the shore, but at the abstract level, they’re all problems we’re trying to solve. We’re all trying to resolve the landscapes.” In this conversation, Kundig reminds us to ask ourselves, “What are the peculiarities of the landscape? What are the peculiarities of the climate—now and further down the road?”
What are the essential qualities of residential architecture that you think will endure over time?
Tom Kundig: At its core, residential architecture is shelter. It’s the most primitive, basic need, right after food. It’s survival, and because of that it has meaning to all of us at the most visceral level. It’s not just personal lifestyle. It is our protection from the elements; it’s our place of refuge. Around the world, we all share the same thing. We need food and we need shelter.
In your opinion, what aspects of residential design need to get thrown out or subverted?
Kundig: I’m not sure anything should be thrown out because it is so close, so personal. Home is not only its “shelterness”; it is also a reflection of the culture. So you could be skeptical about a lot of the stylistic machinations that have occurred over time. Some of them have been absurd, some ridiculous, some wonderful, and some brilliant. Some of them have affected our larger cultural institutions and are very important. Houses are like a breeding ground for the culture because it is where the culture is at its most elemental, human level. So to say you should throw anything out is a little bit dangerous, because you don’t know if you’re throwing out something that’s very important to our future, our humanness.
That said, some of the experiments that have happened at the residential level over the years have been absurd, and yes, in hindsight, were probably mistakes. But they are experiments, they are risks, they are an indication of a changing, moving, and thinking people.
Can you elaborate on some examples of experiments or risks that people have taken in residential design—good or bad?
Kundig: There has been a tendency to oversize homes. I’m seeing more and more a tendency to bring back the scale to a more human, personal scale. It seems like there’s a size for a family unit that makes sense, where you feel in contact with your family members, spouse, or relatives. I think it’s also genetic. There’s a limit to what we feel connected with, and in the past our personal spaces got too big; not only in the recent past but also in the distant past, with the royal palaces and some of the earlier, large residential buildings.
Then there are all sorts of other little minor affectations that came up during different eras, like the sunken living room in the sixties, to pick on an absurd one. Basically, a sunken living room was a perfect place for somebody to trip and fall.
Style is an issue that is pregnant with meaning and differences of opinion, and some stylistic evolutions and experiments were not particularly successful for a place to be with yourself and your family.
What is your guiding light when you design?
Kundig: I’ve always understood architecture as a profession of problem solving. Essentially, it is understanding the issues in front of you—of shelter, style, lifestyle, comfort, and the particular issues of the client. There are also issues of landscape, site, weather, structure, and safety. For example, how is this building going to react in an earthquake, or with winds hitting it and snow on the roof? How is this building going to heat and cool? How is this building going to effectively meet a budget? All these variables work their way into an equation, an algorithm that you’re trying to figure out. You collect all the issues into a big, rough draft, then solve this unique place.
The bottom line is about solving a larger problem, and the more successful and the more elegant, clean, light, agile, and beautiful the solution, the better the architecture.
Do you think that being in the Northwest gives you a specific vision?
Kundig: We’re always asked to talk about regionalism and how it affects the design we do. I used to think that regionalism had a lot to do with the way we design. I’m in a transition period now where I’m not exactly sure if I think that anymore. I’ve met so many people around the world in different cities and landscapes, and I’ve found that we all share a global sensitivity. Whether you’re from the Northwest, Southwest, Australia, or Europe, you find a common thread of problem solving the idiosyncratic situation of a place. That place may be desert, forest, mountains, or the shore, but at the abstract level, they’re all problems we’re trying to solve. We’re all trying to resolve the landscapes. What are the peculiarities of the landscape? What are the peculiarities of the climate—now and further down the road?
Being in the Northwest has made me appreciate how wonderful the landscape is, and how much the natural landscape can inform my work. The study of the environment is, in fact, the study of us; it’s the study of earth, physics, science, and chemistry.
If you’re making an algebraic equation out of your house designs and the landscape is one of the variables, isn’t a different landscape going to create a different answer to your question, even if you’re using the same equation?
Kundig: You’re absolutely right. If it’s a sincere, authentic algorithm, your architecture will be affected by the local conditions and reflect the local materials, local building technologies, and local systems strategies in the building. In other words, when you work in the desert, your desert house is going to have mitigation strategies for the sun that are different from your strategies, for example, on the north slope of Alaska. Issues in both of those extremes should affect the look, feel, shape, and strategy of the house, the logic of the house.
Ultimately, your question suggests that a residence in the Northwest will have a different feel than a house in the high desert of Utah. But it is also asking, if the landscapes are relatively similar, for example, if you compare the temperate forest landscape of the Northwest to New England, do they have to be different? No, they can be very similar. There may be a stylistic expectation, for example of a salt-box style in New England and an Asian Northwest contemporary style in the Northwest, but those cultural influences may have been appropriate for the land. A building that works effectively in one environmental condition could look very similar to one in a comparable environment.
How much do the cultural mores of the region affect your clients’ tastes, and therefore impose themselves upon you as a designer?
Kundig: Interestingly, about 80 percent of my work is not in the Northwest. We’re being hired by people who are attracted to the work we did in the Northwest because they feel that somehow it’s appropriate for their parts of the country, and in fact it can be, whether it’s in the mountains of North Carolina or northern Idaho.
Do you ever have clients who wish to emulate something they like of yours, but you feel it’s completely inappropriate for their landscape?
Kundig: Hardly ever happens, and I think that’s because the people who hire us are very sophisticated about buildings and they understand what the possibilities are. They wouldn’t even ask us to build something completely inappropriate. Sometimes, when you’re published, people will call you who may not understand what it is that you do, but those aren’t necessarily the people who ultimately hire you.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a very expensive house or inexpensive house. Frederick Cabin is a very inexpensive house built for a very sophisticated client who understood the possibility of something very small and discreet in the larger landscape.
I want to ask about the playfulness for which your work is known.
Kundig: Playfulness is really important to me. Maybe it’s because I grew up in northern Idaho and eastern Washington in a small community of artists and architects. The core group of personalities there lived life to its fullest. I recognized that the art and some of the architecture could have a sense of playfulness and wonder. I think that is missing in many houses. For me, if you are living in a home, why shouldn’t it be fascinating? Why shouldn’t it always test you or delight you in different ways? It’s your home. I always say it should be a place where you come home and you smile. Whatever makes you smile, whether it’s a little gizmo that morphs the room in a certain way or if it’s a little wink and a nod about a little design detail that you didn’t see the first time but you discover the second or third time. Bob Venturi called it Second Glance Architecture, which I think is a terrific way of describing what happens that second or third time you look at something, or maybe the fourth, fifth, or sixth time. Maybe it’s something you didn’t even recognize for years.
One of the most wonderful things for me is when I get a phone call from a client after they’ve lived in the house for two or three years, and they say, “Aha! I get that now.” That’s like reading a terrific novel that you have to re-read two or three times, or a movie that you have to buy on DVD because you want to watch it time and time again because every time you look at it, it gets a little richer and more delightful. Playfulness is part of that; it’s part of the story.
You’re very in demand. Do you find it difficult to maintain that playfulness for yourself?
Kundig: I’m known for my gizmos, and people will say, “We want a gizmo.” Well, gizmos don’t just happen; they come out of the process. It’s back to that algorithm idea. You’re solving this whole thing, so you can’t go into it thinking, “I’m going to get something playful here,” because that’s like adding something from the outside that’s not authentic to the process. It would be almost like saying, “I’m going to write an Oscar-winning screenplay.” I think the trick in the creative process is to be ready and facile enough to recognize the moments in which something inventive and wonderful can happen. But to predict or anticipate what that will be is like using a note in a musical score that doesn’t fit. The most concerning part is that those moments are quick. You have to be there and you have to grab them. You don’t want to miss them because that’s the best part.