Tom Kundig, Seattle's Artful Lodger

Tom Kundig still seems surprised by his own success. No matter that The New York Times has dubbed him a “megastar,” or that he has picked up a mantel-straining supply of prestigious awards, including this month, the National Design Award in Architecture Design at the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the first Northwest architect ever so honored. The laurels raining down haven’t clouded Kundig’s sense of self—the self-described “hayseed” from eastern Washington remains hard working but laid back—or his vision of architecture, a contemporary blending of the poetical and the practical.

Kundig, 53, a graduate of the University of Washington School of Architecture and partner in Seattle’s Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects (he designed the firm’s Pioneer Square offices), built his reputation on designing art spaces, such as Seattle’s Winston Wachter Gallery, and spectacular single-family residences, often set in Ansel Adams–esque natural landscapes. His Northwest-informed style is marked by windows that yawn wide (as if confident that there will be something stunning to look out at), and a restrained masculinity displayed via strong lines, a mix of materials such as wood, concrete and metal, and clever feats of engineering. Take his award-winning Chicken Point Cabin in Idaho, which comes with an industrial-style wheel that with a few easy turns opens up an entire window wall, or his Rolling Huts of Mazama, a collection of 200-square-foot, deck-topped metal box cars, designed as one-of-a-kind outdoor guest rooms, that sit up on their steel wheels to take in the view.

Now Kundig, who lives on Queen Anne with his wife, Jeannie, has turned his talents to an oft-mangled and maligned architectural form, the condo. His first foray at 1111 E Pike St., a six-story, urban-infill development set to open this month, has taken root sublimely amidst Capitol Hill’s eclectic urbanscape of arty coffeehouses, shops and clubs.

We quizzed Kundig on his design climb, the state of West Coast architecture, his first condo conception and his upcoming local projects.

How would you describe your approach to architecture?
You know, architecture at its real base level is not an art necessarily. I think what it really is, and [architect] Glenn Murcutt always used this, is it’s an intersection between poetry and function. It’s sort of like an applied art. So, there’s a practical, frugal side to me that loves the mechanisms, the building of the building, the engineering behind them, and there’s also this other side that’s poetic. I just love making beautiful places and things, and dreaming up wonderful devices.

What’s the first project with which you thought, “I’m doing what I like”?
There was a point where I walked away from one particular project that was finished and I was standing there and said, “Oh. I kind of hit a home run here.” All of a sudden it flows, it works, it happened. I was about 44, it was the Studio House [Seattle, 1998], it was almost in The New York Times, and all of a sudden people were going, “Who is this guy out there?”

Do you think West Coast architects are typically less recognized by critics?
There’s some stuff happening up and down the coast, but it’s hit and miss….From Vancouver all the way down to San Diego, this is a very sort of vibrant, active economy, and you’d imagine that there was more coming out of this place….What we’ve all got to pony up to, including myself, is that these high-level juries are coming in [and] do they want to bash us? No. I don’t think so, but what they’re saying is Seattle is a world-class city, it should be doing world-class architecture.

What do you see in Seattle’s architecture?
You’re treading on thin ice. I always like Steven Holl’s answer; he comes from Bremerton. He’s an international architect and he was asked that pointed question.…I think he had a pretty good answer: “It’s hard for me to criticize because architecture does not happen with architects alone. It happens with a client, it happens with local bureaucracies, it happens with budgets, it happens with the underlying culture.” And so he said, “You would have to judge for yourself whether this is good architecture.”

So what about your condo project? You’ve never done one.
A wonderful client [Anne Michelson] came along who was willing to risk it with somebody who didn’t have 80 condominium projects downtown. I had never met her, and she is a wonderful person who has lived in Capitol Hill since 1974, I think, and she loves Capitol Hill the way it is, the way it’s been, the vibrancy, the grit, the humor, the sort of culture, the humanness of the place. She doesn’t want to sanitize it…and Capitol Hill has some things happening with gentrification. And that’s why I was intrigued by Anne, because she wanted a building that recognized the unique culture of the Capitol Hill that she knew…[and] where people with regular means could buy a place, and they would actually use the street and the services on the street, the restaurants, the coffee shops, the stores, post office, all that kind of stuff, rather than see it as a second home.

That’s a pretty cool client who comes in and articulates that kind of desire, and she was also willing to risk it with me. She saw something in [my] architecture which was more about the individual, which wasn’t just about making a multifamily box and stuffing a bunch of people in it….That’s the whole premise of the project. That’s why people can paint [the exterior of] their box in the air. So if they like pink, if they like dark red, gray or whatever, they can pick that color if they pre-buy it.… This was originally an auto row. Remember when you used to be able to buy a car and you got to pick the color from like five colors?...It’s a little bit of a wink and nod to that, rather than a sort of homogenous, generic kind of place….The inside is left relatively morphable…your character can come out in this building rather than being hidden in this sort of high-tailored box.

Do you want to work on larger developments in Seattle?
I’m doing it. The big one is [the Candela] on Second and Pike for Greg Smith and it’s 37 stories. I’m doing The Art Stable on South Lake Union, a seven-story building for artists—I’m really excited about that. That’s with Point 32 [owned by] Chris Rogers, who was the project manager for the Olympic Sculpture Park—and on First and Stewart, a hotel for Bob Thurston, [owner of] Inn at Market. It’s my first hotel. They’re all firsts at this point; they haven’t been built yet, but I’m doing a lot more hotels.

Do you have a certain love? Single residences, multifamily?
I just love it all [laugh]. They all inform each other, you know? You know what it is? It’s totally client based. It doesn’t matter what building I’m doing, if the client’s interested in doing something extraordinary. I’m doing an addition to a pipe-manufacturing facility in Anacortes…and we’re gonna do some things using pipes….I don’t care about the size, how small, how big. It’s the client that’s the most important component for me doing what I love to do.

How does it feel knowing that your work will be around for a while?
It’s spooky. Can you imagine? There it is and it ain’t going away. I can’t tell you how many buildings are in town and I know the background story behind why it happened, and the media doesn’t have it right on what the real story was, but that’s the story. It’s out there and there’s nothing you can do about it.