Tom Kundig: Making Memories With Architecture

TRANSCRIPT

Tom Kundig: It’s also memories, where you touch a building—that is the handshake with the building—and if you can enlarge that moment of that experience, like “I really am moving this door,” you’ll never forget it. If you just move a door, it’s just become so ordinary that you don’t think about it. But if you can take some of those parts, and you understand those parts and pieces well enough and make them extraordinary, you can really make a memory.

Dan Rubinstein: Hi, I’m Dan Rubinstein, and this is The Grand Tourist. I’ve been a design journalist for more than 20 years, and this is my personalized guided tour through the worlds of fashion, art, architecture, food, and travel, all the elements of a well-lived life.

When it comes to architecture, I’m typically left a little bit deflated when I look at most residential projects. Clients can get quite conservative, and what typically comes as a result is something created often with resale value in mind, not usually a radical design statement, and sadly the well-to-do often set aside huge budgets for interiors and mere scraps for the architecture and the architects. Of course there are exceptions and my guest today is one of them.

His projects not only have an undeniable signature but they frequently do new and exciting things that would make almost any observer say “Yeah, I’d die to live in a place like that”: architect Tom Kundig. Tom is one of the principals and owners of a 350-person strong firm Olson Kundig based in Seattle, New York, and Chicago.

While the firm does a wide variety of work, from massive offices to museums around the globe, my interview today centers on the firm’s residential work that Tom has been such an advocate for. His latest book, he’s done many, is Tom Kundig: Complete Houses from Monacelli. It’s a 600-page behemoth with 462 residential projects featured.

So what are his houses like? Imagine a semi-industrial looking modern home that uses lots of natural materials, and also a lot of glass and rusty looking cork and steel all perfectly nestled amongst a natural landscape where, as the saying often goes, the lines between inside and out are expertly blurred. Views are often framed by giant windows and to top it all off you’ll frequently find what they call gizmos which are part of something called kinetic architecture. Imagine massive glass walls that swing open, operated by expertly crafted hand cranks, or even entire structures that move on train tracks. More on that later. 

Tom is a Northwest native born to Swiss parents and has been a keen outdoorsman most of his life. Tom’s firm was started by his business partner Jim Olson in the 1960s and he joined in the mid-80s, becoming an owner about a decade later. Tom’s can-do friendly and humble spirit is, in my opinion, what the design world needs more of and it was such a pleasure chatting with him today about his exciting career. I caught up with Tom from his offices in New York to chat about his youth in the American Northwest, his father the Swiss modernist Moritz Kundig, his early career before joining Jim Olson’s firm, the origins of all the inventive gizmos that are endlessly fascinating, some of his philosophies on design, and much more.

So I read that you grew up in Spokane, Washington which I see as like the most Pacific Northwest town I can think of. What’s your earliest memory of life there?

Well you know it’s interesting that you call it a Pacific Northwest city because it’s on that dry side of Washington state, so if people have kind of an idea of Seattle or Washington they think of the rainy side, for the most part. But the interesting thing about the landscape in Washington is that there’s a very dry high desert side and then there’s the wet side, Seattle, Tacoma area. And Spokane was the center, but really where I grew up was Coeur d’Alene, Northern Idaho, Spokane and up into British Columbia in Penticton and Cranbrook. That was my real neighborhood.

What was life for you there, because I know your father was an architect and your mom worked in the design business in a showroom. If I could go back to you know a Sunday afternoon at home like what was that life like?

That’s an interesting question and I don’t really know how to answer it clearly, as a Sunday afternoon. I will say that I was lucky. Growing up in Spokane, I grew up in a big landscape. Obviously the landscape becomes super important to my life, my architecture, even my choice of profession at one point, and professions, eventually. But we also were in a small community and it was a small community of very interesting creatives, especially artists.

Ed and Nancy Kienholz were sort of friends of the family. The Balazs, of course, Harold Balazs, we’ll talk about that I’m sure, was huge influence on my my life. Rudy Autio you know from Helena, and Archie Bray and Pete Voulko, and a number of those kinds of artists congregated around this local community and because it was such a small community you got to be influenced by them very personally. And again I just think it’s a lucky background.

And tell me a little bit about your father, which is something that I knew nothing about when I first met you. His name was Moritz Kundig and he immigrated to the U.S. from Switzerland and he was a modernist especially out West, and noted for that. Tell me a little bit about his legacy and what your dad was like.

Yeah you’re right. He and my mother moved from Switzerland, initially to Merced California and that’s where I was born, and then quite quickly after a couple of years they moved to Spokane. So basically that’s where I was raised. He did come to America as a modernist; he was trained at the ETH in Zurich—clearly a modernist academic agenda—he also came to Spokane at a particularly interesting time and I think a lot of communities in North America would share this legacy. The mid-century was actually a time of particularly good small-scale architecture. Experimental, it was enthusiastic, it was optimistic. And what’s interesting is, there are so many good architects that come from these small communities that no one knows. And because, I don’t know, I think there’s a history there’s a story to be told. Spokane certainly had a really strong group of modernist architects that were doing particularly good work. They influenced each other. Again, it was again a small community so we knew the architects well and again, I consider myself lucky because even though I didn’t want to be an architect when I was a kid, just to be around them. I understand the influence on my life and my profession now is extraordinary. And that was of course the connection to the artists, so the artists and the architects worked together on a number of projects.

Is there a project of your dad’s that’s still around today that you particularly love?

Well, there’s actually a particularly strong one, and it was also—my dad was working with an architect named Royal McClure. And Royal hired my dad, when he came up to Spokane, they worked on a Unitarian Church in 1962. It was an extraordinary project, I think, and there’s a little bit of history there that’ll come up in a book. But  the artist Harold Balazs and Rudy Autio were very heavily involved in the architecture of that building. Now this is interesting. So, even back in the ’60s, the artists were actually not just putting the art on the building or on a site, but they were actually making the walls, making the lanterns, making the planters and podiums. So I grew up not knowing that that was relatively extraordinary and it is an extraordinary building. It still exists, it was remodeled and as we all know remodels can sort of lose the spirit of the initial idea. It’s still a strong enough building that the spirit I think remains.

Did your parents speak Swiss German in the household? Did you pick up any of that?

Well my first language was actually Swiss German. Because as kids, of course my parents would communicate with us in Swiss German and well, that was our language. But we actually moved back to Switzerland when I was about four years old, my brother was three, and we spent close to two years in Switzerland. Because the idea always was, and you see this with a lot of immigrants I think that, especially back then after World War II, that you move to America because there’s this big crazy wild thing, wonderful thing in North America, but you always made sort of a decision that you would go back home. So, they said they would come to North America for five years and then they would go back to Switzerland. So, they actually moved back to Switzerland.

One of my my most clear memories was getting on the train in Spokane to move back to Switzerland and all of our friends, our really close friends, were on the platform you know saying goodbye to us and I didn’t understand quite clearly how final that goodbye was—and it turned out not to be final, which thank goodness, but it was hilarious. They all had instruments, so they were like a marching band on the platform playing I don’t know what, but it was hilarious to see all your friends playing instruments that they were not trained to play. And somehow some melody emerged out of that as a train pulled away.

Maybe it was a Swiss national anthem.

It could be, who knows. That memory was seared in my memories. And of course, that was a pivotal moment in my life to move from Spokane back to Switzerland a couple years in.

How long did it take for them to realize “Oh we don’t want to stay here, we love America” and come back?

Pretty quickly. At least my both my parents, I would ask them why did you move back and they said pretty quickly they recognized that there was a sort of a a freedom in the United States or North America—because a lot of our experience was up in Canada too, a lot of our friends were up in Canada, and a lot of them were Swiss friends. They were immigrants, they went to this big landscape, this wild landscape, everything was new. I mean Switzerland’s obviously old in terms of civilization. America was new, and for western influence. And I think it was mostly just opportunities. You know, the unknown opportunities. I think there were always known opportunities in Switzerland but I think America represented unknown opportunities, which I think is of course fantastic

And you studied geophysics before switching over to architecture. Why geophysics, which is like tectonic plates and things like that?

Well, we all go to college with certain dreams. I grew up in a really serious extraction industry area, Kellogg Valley, you know Kellogg and Wallace. That was, I believe, the largest silver mining area in the world at one point. There was a big smelter there. Obviously, hugely environmentally impactful industries. And of course, the agricultural industry is a big part of the Spokane area, the surrounding areas, and the logging industry was a huge part of that area. So, I was surrounded by all these pieces of machinery, and sort of the physics of moving big things to make little things so we could actually as human beings hold them or make big stuff out of them. Make little things to make big things if that makes some sense. For whatever reason I was totally fascinated with that. I was also raised during the hot rod ’60s and we never had any car in our garage that we were working on, but I worked on a lot of cars as a kid and I was just fascinated with the physics of the metal work. And of course Harold, you know his work is all about physics. He fabricated everything. 

So, I kind of knew I wasn’t an artist but I was totally fascinated. Especially with how we would move some of those big objects, it was just the two of us or three of us sometimes, his son worked for him a lot. And then that kind of followed into mountain climbing and so I was up in the mountains, and the physics of mountains and the physics of rivers. So, I just sort of naturally thought that I’m just interested in these environmental sciences, these big sciences, so I went into geophysics. And I loved physics in high school. Well, I went to the University of Washington with that in mind and pretty quickly figured out that “Yeah I’m not exactly the material to be a geophysicist,” and so as I was taking the maths and the calculus and the physics I was also beginning to take art classes. And we all know that architecture is this sort of ideal intersection between the sacred and the profane or the poetic and the technical or scientific. That’s where the intersection happens with architecture. So, it was a bit of a natural evolution as I went to school. I just felt comfortable. It felt right and I couldn’t be happier.

And so, after graduation, before joining Olson Kundig at the time, you had your own early career and a different firm with another partner. Tell me about that first decade or so of practice and what kind of work were you doing?

I worked during my Masters education. I worked for a terrific group of sort of wild people and it was fun and it was crazy and I met a good friend there. And he and I went to work in another firm, but all of a sudden he was contacted by a friend in Alaska. So John went up north. He and his wife had lived there, so he went back and he loved Alaska, so he invited me to go up. We took my Volkswagen van up there, full of architecture gear, and opened up an office in Alaska.

So, you know, I was unmarried. It was a heck of an adventure. My background is basically looking for adventures. That was a heck of an adventure. I couldn’t be happier that I experienced those years up there. But, because of a relationship I had to come back to Seattle and that’s when I knew it was time to be somewhat stable in a situation. And I joined a firm that ultimately, Olson Sundberg contacted me. I interviewed with them and Jim hired me back in 1986 and the rest is history. I’ve been here since 1986.

When you met Jim for the first time, what was that like? How did you know it’s going to work?

Well, that’s actually a really great question because I could tell it was going to work because he felt like a nice version of the architects that I grew up with. Which is somebody that was open and enthusiastic and optimistic. Positive about the future and worked hard, you could tell. And he was funny, and I think that’s really important, to have a sense of humor in our industry. It just felt right. It felt like I knew this situation and I certainly appreciated their investment in making good architecture. It was a transition between Olson Walker and Olson Sundberg when I came down here. 

And so when you started working in the firm, how did this work on houses begin in terms of like what the firm was doing?

Excellent question because I really came from more of a commercial background, but I happened to do a couple of houses. You know, the typical evolution of an architect was, if you started your own firm like my dad did, you started on houses and remodels and kitchens and it kind of grew into commercial and you sort of turned your back on residential work. So, I had some practice in residential but not really. It was mostly commercial and institutional. Started working here, that was a moment in time of the firm in that transition that they were kind of in trouble with work for all sorts of reasons it was you know high interest rates, whatever. They had made a commitment, just like most firms, to turn their back on residential work and go into more commercial work. That didn’t work out particularly well so because they historically had such a strong—just like my dad and just like Royal and just like all those other architects—a strong career in residential work, they went back into residential work. And it was clear that we would never turn our back, in a sense, like it would be historically done, on residential work. So I was thrown into the fire to work on residential projects with residential architects that really were experienced and knew what they were doing. So I had a terrific early education in residential work, and I found that I actually really enjoyed it. One big deal about residential work or smaller work, cabins and huts and whatever, is that they’re relatively short timelines. So, the design arc from the scribbles to the finish is relatively short. If you’re working on a commercial project that’s a long process. So, if you can continue to work on these relatively smaller projects, you can see that arc time and time again and learn so much with all these different situations and circumstances, that I began to really see the huge value in working on on these projects, meeting these people, working in different landscapes, working with artists, working with fabricators, learning about materials, their expertise. So I’ll do residential work for the rest of my career, happily, because I’m still learning from virtually every project 

(SPONSOR BREAK)

And so, fast forward to this new book. Congratulations, it’s quite the tome. I think it’s 600 pages, it’s quite the volume, and it’s so impressive to see all these homes that you’ve created, speaking of short-term pen to completion. The one that sticks out is one of the first ones, the studio house in 1998, which kind of opens the book more or less. Can you take me back to the studio house and what is it’s Tom Kundig DNA.

That’s a really great question because it is in fact a turning point in my career. Because when I came to the firm originally, of course I was in more of a support situation with Jim in particular. He was doing a lot of the residential work. And I was happily in that sort of master class. But, pretty quickly he got a project with this particular client and we just weren’t hitting it, you know. It just wasn’t working out. And boy, that happens in everybody’s career. It happens in my career now, I just want to make that really clear, that sometimes the gears aren’t meshing, and we weren’t meshing with that client. But the client came to me, and said “We would like to talk to you as the lead on the project because we have a feeling that you’ve got a sense of what we’re asking.”

And I kind of agreed, to tell you the truth. I mean I came from a different background and I had different DNA, frankly. And it’s sort of a different training if you may. And  it worked out perfectly. You know, in the music world, there are the first albums sometimes, of people that come out of being studio musicians or whatever and then they’ve built up this sort of energy of their own ideas or their own DNA and they’ve matured to a point. And their first album is just a rocket ship. It gets them immediately on the map.

And can you describe the house a little bit to those who are listening?

Well, it’s called studio house for a reason because it is ultimately a studio—was, the owners don’t live there anymore—where the owners lived in the studio, if that makes sense. It was the center of their life. So the kitchen, living, dining areas, are in a big volumetric room and the photographer, in particular, liked to shoot against really natural materials. Well, that was an obvious one to me. I actually grew up with concrete and steel as a material left in its raw state working for Harold and working on construction sites. They were materials that I loved and there was a lot of influence from other architects that worked in those materials, people like Carlo Scarpa of course, that it was a moment where I was really feeling like this it. And I always will say this to all young architects: a lot of people will say, look, you’ve had this successful career because you were lucky and you have the right clients. Well I think everybody gets that moment in time when you have the right client. But you better be prepared, that when that moment—everybody has it in their career—when that moment comes in your career, you better be in a position and with the sort of wisdom that you’re going to hit it out of the ballpark. Because if you don’t, you may have missed on the one chance.

And I think studio house came along at a point in my career, a point in my sort of youth, where I was able to hit a long ball. I remember walking into the house after it was done and I went just—before that you’d go into some houses you’ve worked on and you go “Oh, yeah okay. That’s good. It’s great.” But I remember walking into the studio house and I went “Oh this feels mature.” It felt like this was a fit. It was a fit for the owners also. We all worked together. There were fabricators that were involved, there were designers that were involved. And it was just a moment in time where it all came together.

So, it has sort of an industrial aesthetic. It’s a working studio that you live in. It’s made out of very natural materials, raw concrete, raw steel, plasters that are raw, welding details that were not ground smooth. Of course, I grew up around welders, sculpture fabricators, and so I recognize the beauty of a weld bead left as-is, you know, in the hand of the artist. So a lot of the sense of that building has a sort of a craft feel to it, where you can see the hand of the person that, I don’t want to overstate that but it was made by hand, you could tell that it was made by hand.

And there’s a lovely detail that I feel is very you, and that is sort of a nice signal for the future of not just of the book but also of your career. In the house, there’s a kitchen cabinet with like a cement-looking island that has these large doors under the tabletop of the island that swing open. It’s quite a large swing. And the doors are on these tracks that are embedded in the cement floor. How did that come about? Because I feel like that is such a signature. You do that on a much bigger scale now, but that’s the smaller scale of a kitchen cabinet door. Instead of scraping the floor it’s just on a beautiful track.

I agree, it’s one of those moments. Actually, another moment is the big pivot door on the window wall. Sometimes, if you know your materials—and this is that moment in your career—you know your materials, you know the limits, you know the potential. So you can do something audacious, and somebody might think “Okay, it’s kind of crazy to make a cabinet door out of concrete that rolls on a bronze wheel.” Fortunately, it was a client that loved the idea, the idea of the idea, and was able to embrace the risk, because there’s risk involved in all of that. You’ll notice that countertop is huge. It’s one casting, the sink, the countertop, everything. That was an audacious move on our part. It was literally precast in the big studio room, hence studio, and lifted into place. There’s a whole kind of hilarious story behind the reality of everybody just understanding, “Oh wait a minute, how are we going to do.” And the doors are similar, because they were super heavy. So you have to solve the problem. It’s not just a wheel problem, it’s a hinge problem also. And it has to be movable, you know, it has to has to be—I mean it’s something that you get into, it is heavier than a cabinet door or furniture door.

Is there any reason for doing it other than just pure aesthetics?

No, it’s also memories. You know sometimes you make these moves, whether it’s a big window or big door or whatever. It’s like Juhani Pallasmaa says, where you touch a building, that is the handshake with the building. And I love that quote because that’s a very personal memorable moment. And if you can somehow enlarge that moment of that experience, like “I really am moving this door,” you’ll never forget it. You’ll never forget that door. You’ll never forget what you’re actually doing. If you just move a door, a typical ordinary door, I bet you never think about the physics of the hinge, the weight of the door, how it’s cantilevered, how that door mechanism is actually working. It just becomes so ordinary you don’t think about it. But if you can take some of those parts, and you understand those parts and pieces well enough, and make them extraordinary you can really make them memorable.

And this brings us to this concept of kinetic design, which is such a signature of yours, and your team also calls them gizmos. Tell me about what exactly is a gizmo for you.

Back to the idea if you have enough wisdom about the physics of the natural world, the physics of materials, and and you know some of the operations. Basically my whole life was involved in a little bit of that. So, if something comes along, like an owner says something that is audacious or kind of absurd or you think of something that’s absurd—and not absurd like silly absurd, but something that will be memorable because you want to be careful. You don’t want to do it for a gizmos sake. You want to do it because you can do something that’s extraordinary and you can do something that’s memorable. 

So, I had a client on the chicken point project and the client said “Geez, it’s a beautiful view. The lakes out there and the mountains are out there.” And he goes “Wouldn’t it be great if you could just open up the whole front end of this house and just see that view.” And you know again, I’m an architect that is going to be affected by the context of the situation, whatever the stakeholders are saying, whether it’s the climate, whether it’s the landscape, whether it’s that the client said something like that. So I said “I think we can do something like that.” He had no idea what I was thinking. But the root of that was from an offhand statement from a client. And I immediately went into, “Hold that thought, I think we can pull that off.

What’s really important in that discussion is that I knew we could do it in terms of physics, in terms of counterweights, in terms of pulleys, or whatever. I didn’t really know how to get there. Because the engineering of something that’s about six tons of glass and steel, that’s pretty heavy. So, it’s not only heavy to move, it’s also potentially dangerous, you know. So again, I had a client that was willing to take the risk but we needed to engage somebody that had also a little sense of risk. And that was Phil Turner, who has become our kind of legacy gizmologist in the office. Phil is not so much in the office physically, but he is definitely in the office just culturally. So, he gets involved and thinks about these engineering problems, physics problems, in a very clear—and this is what I found so…because of my background. You can over design or over complicate something, but the real beauty of design is something that looks really simple, but to get there is actually pretty complex. So, we all know editing back to the idea, making something complex look simple is the real beauty of design. And that’s what Phil is a genius at. So if you describe something to him, and I described this window thing to him and he goes “Yeah, I think I can do it.” So there was some mock-up that went into it in his shop. At that point he owned a company called Turner Exhibits, he’s the founder, and they would do devices or something for Boeing, you know mock-ups, really complicated fabrication. He got involved and the rest is history. It was just doable. I mean we see those doors now all over the place. And that’s great, because it means you had some sort of influence in the culture. But the first move to make that kind of move is the biggest risk.

But a big part of this is not just a door that can move up with a button, where you buy it from some system. It’s that the gears are all completely mechanical, they’re hand cranked, they’re beautifully crafted. It’s part of the design or the decor in a sense.

100%. In fact, you become part of that machine and that’s the sort of memory. Because pushing a big red button and getting a motor to lift something up, that’s like a garage door. To actually go up and move something, your arm, your body, the way you’re standing, you’re actually part of that machine. That machine doesn’t work unless you’re the source of energy behind it. And if you take it to that level, even instinctively, even if somebody isn’t really thinking about it that way, I think that’s why it’s memorable. And those of us that really do think “Oh wait a minute, my arm geometry, my shoulder geometry, it’s all part of this device that’s moving six tons of glass and steel.

In the book, there’s probably my favorite example of this kinetic architecture which is the Maxon house and studio which is, for those listening, there’s the house and then there’s the studio which is like a little tower on train tracks. And it’s very wide train tracks and a very flat little studio. I think you wrote in the book that it’s like 400 square feet or 350 square feet or something tiny like that on two levels. And when the guy wants to be close to home the studio can be on the train tracks close to the main house, and when he wants to be in solitude near some trees, it can go all the way to the very end of the tracks or somewhere in between I guess.

How did that come about because moving a whole little mini building seems much different than a very fancy garage door, for lack of a better term.

This is also the interesting sort of evolution of an idea, and if you work on these smaller projects these ideas come up. That was an idea based on an earlier project, where it had something to do with a mother-in-law and had something to do with a sort of like humorous discussion about “Could I press a red button and move my mother-in-law to the other side of the the site” and we all laughed and and I think the mother-in-law would have preferred that also. But what it did is it elicited some thinking and Phil and I actually worked on the idea of moving basically a mother-in-law apartment to the other end of the site.

I mean honestly, most of the issues are pretty solvable. The plumbing issues are a little more difficult, so it’s almost like you have to move an RV or something like that to the other end of the site, make an attachment. The studio, for Lou, doesn’t have plumbing issues. It basically is an electrical issue, so it basically is like a big extension cord that follows the movement of the office. But it does speak to something that’s really important in virtually all the projects we work on, especially those that are in the creative business. The brain was one of the first projects like that, where the discussion with the owner was—he is a director of movie shorts and commercials and documentaries. So he needs peace time, private time. Where in the studio house, everybody was in the house, some creatives—I include myself in this—I can’t work in the house. I have to work somewhere else. I have to go into some place that’s out of the normal normal of a house, the chaos, the dogs and cats and kids and friends and go into a place of peace. And the brain was exactly. You leave one door and you commute about 50 feet, and then you go into this sanctuary that’s totally peaceful. Lou’s studio was that. In the morning, he could have breakfast with the family, press a button, he goes out to the other end and does his work, and when lunch time comes around he can drive his studio back to the office. Now, you can walk frankly, but Lou being something somebody that’s a risk taker, a great client, and just fascinated with audacious ideas, embraced it 100%. And the reason, just be really frank, the reason that project exists is because Lou just really leaned in heavily on the actual fabrication and systems of how that worked. He brought us in, Phil was involved, Jeremy was involved, a bunch of people, and there were others, train operators and engineers were involved. It’s actually a fairly sophisticated move.

Was there ever a request for some kinetic design like this where you couldn’t make it happen.

We’ve never had a request for one of these things to fly.

Yet. 

That would be a tough one for us. No, not really. I mean as long as it’s within some sort of reasonable zone of physics. Obviously none of these devices go 80 miles an hour like a car. They’re relatively slow and safe. Because the thing you’re building is the prototype, is the archetype. 

There’s only one. 

And boy, I sure hope it works. And they have, and fingers crossed they always do.

And while your work is really synonymous with the northwest aesthetically, you’ve also done work in places like Costa Rica and other really beautifully warm places that I’d like to be in right now. What would you describe as your approach to residential architecture in general, that’s flexible enough to work in these extremes from cold and wet and misty to hot and wet and misty.

It’s the most interesting part, in some ways, of being an architect. And what I mean by that is contex. Because everything we do, whether it’s an urban situation, a suburban situation, or a rural situation, or a cultural situation around the world. The only continent we haven’t done a project in is Antarctica. I’d love to do a project in Antarctica.

I feel like if anyone could, it would be you.

Well, I would embrace that 100%. Because what it does is, you go to these places like Costa Rica, like Brazil, like Korea, like Hawaii, those are warm—well not Korea so much—but New Zealand or Australia, we’re literally working around the world and have worked around the world. Just to be clear, the difference between a mountain house and a shore house—it’s not rocket science to figure out either place. You have to be smart again about the physics of it, the climate, whatever. There are special situations, technically, in either location in a high desert house. There are learned wisdoms working in those areas but around the world it’s the same physics, right. Gravity goes down… But, you just have to know what the input is in those equations, if you’re in a hot humid climate or a hot dry climate or a cold human climate or a cold dry climate. I hope that answers your question.

Yeah. What do you think makes your approach to architecture and specific climates and sites, or site responsiveness to use a more technical term. What makes your approach to this unique?

Well, I’m not sure if it’s unique but I’m totally fascinated with it, so I want to dig into it deeply if that makes sense. Not quite at a scientist level, because that would be a real specialty, but a real interest in the science of where it is and the cultural science. The anthropology of a situation, the archaeology of a situation, the ethnology of a situation, it’s just fascinating. Well, the client of course is a huge part of the context and given all those things I don’t know if it’s unique but it certainly can lead to unique um solutions if you’re really really sincere to looking at the context of the situation. And part of that context is also the academic context, the learned context of architecture throughout history in those different climates and those different cultures.

Obviously, your firm does more than just houses and you work on projects outside of that as well, and you mentioned your dad’s work on a church, and your firm has also worked on churches and other spiritual projects. I’m curious, when you’re designing these homes are you intentionally creating a home that has a peaceful meditative quality to it or is it just a natural outgrowth of the way you plan space and capturing views and air and sunlight?

It’s an interesting question because yes, you’re trying to make a place a home, it’s a place of safety, a place of intimacy, it’s a place of experience, it’s probably the most important structure whether it’s a an apartment in in New York or a studio out in the middle of Wyoming. These are places of refuge, these are places where you come home. As Glenn Murcutt once said to me, it’s kind of too bad that architects have sort of turned their back on the most essential structure, which is the home. It’s food, water, shelter. Home is shelter. But to your question, I think in that shelter there should be, I learned this from Professor Wendell Lovett at the University of Washington, there really should be two sort of extremes in a house. There should be the cave, there should be the place you feel comfortable, the place you can be intimate, the place you feel safe. And then there also should be sort of a prospect side to it, you can see the view, it can be breathtaking, it almost maybe feels slightly risky, so you have that yin and yang of the experience of life and you can choreograph your day basically between prospect and refuge, if that makes sense. So the home has some of the richest potential of life experiences and it should, because that is the place theoretically you spend the most time in.

And above all of this, are you still a mountain climber, are you still an avid outdoorsman?

Well, I like being outside but I do not climb mountains. I don’t even ski anymore, which it’s kind of ridiculous in a way. It was such an important part of my life and in fact at one point in my life—speaking of ridiculous, I thought maybe I could do architecture as a support to being a professional mountain guide or something like that. You know, you gotta make commitments and at this point—well, this is an interesting discussion, sort of a side to what we’re talking about. If you’re pretty good at something at some point in your life, like you’re a good musician or something, sometimes I think it’s hard to go back unless you’re really at that same skill level. It’s almost a little frustrating. So I couldn’t go back and climb. I’m older now, i’m just not physically as fit. I’m not as technically trained in skiing, where maybe at one point I was a little bit more. If I do it, it’s a little frustrating. But I love being out there. We have a mountain house, we have a lake cabin.

Where’s the lake cabin?

Northern Idaho. It’s our family lake cabin. My dad designed it in 1967, I think it was built in ’68. It actually influenced me a lot even though I didn’t want to be an architect at that point. I think it’s one of his best buildings. So, my wife and I actually bought it out of the trust and basically have been restoring it and expanding it in the spirit of the cabin and feel really good about it. I have a lot of memories there. Now, we’re just about finished. It actually is brought up as an influence in the upcoming book and there’s a few photographs of it. And the mountain cabin is up in the north cascades, close to the Canadian border, and we share that with two other people and oh it just takes my breath away every time I’m up there. We just had these huge doors that just opened to that big landscape. It’s just fantastic.

And when designing or building any home, not by you but just by anyone, if someone came to you and said “Okay I’m gonna do this, I’m gonna build my own home and design and we’re gonna create something unique,” what’s one piece of advice you would give them?

If they’re hiring me? 

No, they’re gonna do it on their own, let’s say, and they just kind of want a piece of advice.

Well, you are able to do it. You’re not an expert. Like all the diy stuff, you’re not going to do your plumbing as efficiently or as effectively as a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter or craftsperson or furniture builder, and that’s true in architecture. This is our profession. This is what we’re good at. Doesn’t mean you can’t do it. I have yet to see a project done by an owner without the help of an architect that kind of meets the level of the potential of architecture. That doesn’t mean all architecture that’s done by architecture meets that potential either, let’s just be really clear about that.

Let’s say someone hired a contractor or an architect of record just to kind of do all the plumbing and all that stuff, but like when you’re designing the home, bird’s eye view what kind of advice would you give.

It’s actually also a nuanced answer. I had a client ask me a whole bunch of questions, really put me through the the ringer because he had never done architecture for the family before, and he finally ended up questioning and it was long—it was a couple of hours, three hours—he said “Well, how can we screw it up” and I never had a client ask me that.

I thought about it, I said “Well if you hire me, you just got to trust me. If you don’t trust me, don’t hire me and I’ll try to find an architect for you that you can trust.” I think at the end of the day, clients should be involved in the design, frankly, and if you’ve hired the right architect, that architect is going to embrace your ideas.

They’re going to understand this is your house, not mine, and I’m going to try to make an architecture out of your ideas, which is what I think an architect’s role is. But you gotta kind of trust me that I’m listening to what you’re saying and I’m then bringing an architecture to that idea. Like Chicken Point, the big window, I mean Jeff offhand said “Jeez I wish I could open this whole front end of the house out to the lake.” Perfect. That’s the kind of input I would recommend you convey to an architect. Don’t try to solve the problem, if this makes sense, because the architect should be listening to that and be in the position to solve the problem. A lot of people will hire a contractor and then design it as you’re implying and then have an architect maybe just stamp the drawings. Well a contractor is good at building, they’re not necessarily good at designing even if it’s a design build situation that’s a little more nuanced. Also, that  can actually work, I have rarely seen it work, but it can work. It’s a long answer but it’s a difficult question. I think you just have to understand that the contractor knows what they’re doing, the architect knows what they’re doing, and the client knows what they want. And they should be using those two entities to get what they want.

What’s next for you? What is fall of 2025?

Well the book is going to be rolled out and that’s going to be a big deal for me personally. That’s the fifth book, I guess. To your earlier point, it does sort of consolidate the residential career a little bit, tries to tell the story. We’re doing a lot more sports facilities, and honestly I couldn’t be more excited about that. There’s so many things that we’re working on. We’re doing a lot of resorts, which also typically resorts are built-in fantastic landscapes, from the mountains to the deserts to the shores, kind of a dream to work on these guest experiences where people leave them with memories—just like you should leave all architecture with with good memories, optimistic, enthusiastic, even if you’re not aware the architecture is giving you those those memories. Boy there’s just so much.

If you had to describe yourself in three words, what three separate words would you choose?

I would say relentless, risk taker, and realistic.

Thank you to my guest Tom Kundig as well as to everyone at Cameron PR and Monacelli for making this episode happen. The editor of The Grand Tourist is Stan Hall. To keep this going, don’t forget to visit our website and sign up for our newsletter, The Grand Tourist Curator at thegrandtourist.net. And follow me on Instagram @danrubinstein. 

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