Growing up, American architect Tom Kundig embraced hot rod culture, which he says is about "modifying and improving the look and performance of things." Naturally, this attitude extends to his architecture. He told me, “A house should be a place where you experiment with things.” His own house, appropriately christened the Hot Rod House, is a wonderful testimony to that provocative thought. Despite leading a large 300-architect firm, most of his projects are single-family residences. “Houses—the architect insists—are all about food, water, and shelter. Resolving them is the root of architecture.”

Born in 1954 in Merced, California, Kundig grew up in Spokane in eastern Washington in the family of a practising architect father and a mother who worked at a mid-century modern houseware and furniture store. Both of Kundig's parents moved to the United States from Switzerland shortly after World War II. Love for art and fascination with machines employed in the extraction industry—mining, lumber, and agriculture—sparked Kundig’s interest in studying architecture. He holds two degrees from the University of Washington—a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Design, earned in 1977, and a Master of Architecture, acquired in 1981. Shortly after graduation, he got his professional license and following his apprenticeships in Washington and Switzerland ran his own firm with a partner for a couple of years in Alaska.

In 1986 Kundig found employment at the Seattle practice Olson/Sundberg Architects. He became one of the firm’s owners in 2000 when it was renamed Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen or OSKA. The company was named Olson Kundig Architects in 2008 and it has been known as Olson Kundig since 2015. Among the firm’s most representative built works are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Discovery Center in Seattle; Shinsegae International, a 15-story headquarters for a luxury clothing brand in Seoul, South Korea; Martin's Lane Winery in Kelowna, British Columbia; MrSteam Headquarters for a steam shower manufacturing company in New York; and houses across the U.S. as well as in Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan, China, and Australia. In the following interview with Tom Kundig, we discussed hot rod culture, the work of architects who influenced him, experimenting in his own house, the beauty of raw steel and ageing materials, building on ecotone lines, the optimistic sense of the future, and, ultimately, seeing architecture as an adventure, like a mountain climb.  

Vladimir Belogolovsky (VB): Among some of the fundamental inspirations for your architecture you mentioned Maison de Verre by Pierre Chareau and the work of Carlo Scarpa. You have said, “The work of those two architects gave me permission to do what I felt was right.” How so?

Tom Kundig (TK): You are spot on. Just to reiterate—there is a group of people: clients, Phil Turner who is a gizmologist who works with us on designing kinetic elements, and myself who are willing to take a risk. That’s what permitted us to produce the kind of architecture that we imagined would be possible. Of course, to be honest, we were anxious: “Is it going to work? Will it work beautifully?” And now this practice permitted a lot of people to try the gizmo thing. Chareau and Scarpa did things that were not necessarily in the culture. When I was at school, they were recognised but their aesthetics were not embraced. Yet, the way both dealt with materials and the nuance of detailing rang true for me. And I love the story behind Maison de Verre. Those steel columns are clad in black slate for fireproofing, which is so rational. They are painted red because that’s the colour of red oxide primer. And the reason these columns go through the room is to hold the apartment above where the old lady upstairs lived and refused to move. I couldn’t be more excited about the rational ideas that came out of such poetic logic. 

VB: You have said that you grew up in hot rod culture. You even named your own house Hot Rod House. Could you touch on that?

TK: Sure. I grew up at a time and place where virtually every garage had a car in it that somebody was working on. Back then there were hot rod builders. People did it by themselves or with friends. The colours and the shapes were all driven by artistic agenda. I loved being part of that. I was not a mechanic. I was more into working on car bodies. It is natural for me to be working on shaping things. That’s why architecture fits naturally with me. I see architecture as the intersection of rational and poetic. That culture was appealing because it was always about modifying and improving the look and performance of things. To me, a house should be a place where you experiment with things. You may not be able to try certain ideas with a client but you can certainly try them in your own place. There are things that I would never try on my clients because of liabilities, leaking, or other reasons. They work because I tried them in my own house but they are not accepted by the profession and that’s fine. I am talking about such innovations as glueing window glass directly to steel, which I have done in Hot Rod House. What I like about hot rods is that it is all about experimenting and testing new things.

VB: In other words, Hot Rod House is your laboratory. Do you see it as somewhat unfinished? Do you continue experimenting on various parts from time to time?

TK: That’s interesting. Well, the house is not in such a state that it has open walls with studs sticking out. [Laughs.] It is pretty finished at this point. But there are still little things that you can take out and tweak and rethink. I haven’t been doing that as much as I had in the past; I am simply too busy here, at the office. Of course, my job is to invent and innovate. So, my focus is on my career rather than the house. Yet, there are features in the house that still guide me. My stair with hemmed edges is a perfect example. I learned that by watching hot rod builders and also artist Harold Balazs, how to make floppy steel stiff. And now those hemmed edges have become very much part of my work. It is a smart way of making a structure out of plates rather than sticks. I worked for Harold as a grinder in my teenage years. The artist was a close family friend. Experimenting with materials such as concrete, wood, steel, copper, brass, or enamel I learned directly from him.  

VB: In your work, you tend to focus a lot on small-scale projects such as single-family residences, which is very unusual for a large firm. Do these small-scale projects present greater opportunities for architects?

TK: Houses are huge opportunities for architects. Residential design is all about food, water, and shelter. These are our basic needs. How we resolve them in rudimentary, cultural, and spiritual needs is the root of architecture. Architects who have never done residential work have a sense of humanity missing in their work; the human scale is missing in them. Houses are relatively quick and it makes the learning curve—study-learn, study-learn—much quicker. In our office, we do small and large projects in parallel. Working only on large projects, would not allow to have a cycle of working with craftspeople and other phases. In the office, we have both houses and large projects. But in terms of time, roughly half is spent working on houses.

VB: Your work underlines the beauty of ageing. You have said, "Patina on materials is more beautiful than when they are new. Weathering the building will make it more interesting.”

TK: And more beautiful.

VB: Beauty is precisely what I would like you to talk about. Could you touch on the beauty of raw steel and how you discovered it?

TK: Well, again, Harold, the artist, worked in both mild and Corten steel. He experimented with rust when it was not received well. Artists have been using rust for a long time as a finished material, as a material of beauty. I think weathering makes objects more beautiful over time because of how they change colors and appear different in every part. I like the nuances. I was taught that and I recognise it. And now I bring it to my architecture. There is beauty in how natural materials age; there is more interest. That’s why I think patina and traces of aging are fantastic. That’s life. 

VB: It has been described that you like to build on ecotones where topographical boundary lines of different landscapes collide. Could you give some examples and what’s the intention behind that?

TK: Virtually in all of our projects you will see a line between the forest on the back side and the view or meadow, or lake on the front side, the big view. Our instincts work similarly. Our eyes are at the front, so we are always looking for protection in the back. Animals are the same. They like to stay in the transition between the forest or the cliff, or anything that protects them from the back and they can see their enemies or whoever is in front of them. That’s the line I try to pick up in my houses—you are protected in the back and you have a protected view in front. That’s what’s called the ecotone line, that transition from the backside to the front side.

VB: You asked this provocative question, “How can we design anything that’s more beautiful than the natural world?” What’s your answer?

TK: For sure, everything we do is influenced by our baseline, which is nature and, of course, the cosmos. This is where everything comes from, including us. We can only try to learn from nature. That’s why I love materials that show ageing. That’s how we can create environments that can be a part of the natural world. There is a history of experiences that I like to reflect on. That’s how you create richer conversations. I also like the idea that architecture does not take centre stage. For example, I like photos of buildings when they are shifted one-third or two-thirds to the side. I want to see where these buildings are placed. I am against the idea of a building as a two-dimensional image. Architecture is about all the senses that you discover as you go around it and through it. I like it when architecture becomes part of the natural landscape. No building is about itself. It is always about what’s out there, what’s around it, and what’s within. 

VB: You have said, “Buildings are supposed to be delightful and playful.” Could you elaborate?

TK: Buildings are supposed to be optimistic. In the making of architecture, there is an effort of optimism. Architecture is something that’s hard to plan and hard to make but it is all about the optimistic sense of the future. Steve Jobs’s motto was passion, innovation, and optimism. So, optimism is the root of innovation. We must be optimistic to survive. 

VB: Then you said, “Architecture is evolutionary, not revolutionary.”

TK: That’s right. I think revolutionary architecture often forgets the context of the place or the context of culture. But evolution is all about context. Innovation needs to be evolutionary. 

VB: I am fascinated by your quote, “Unless you are scared or nervous, I don’t know if you are really progressing.” How do you see the progression in your own work? Do you ever think about it consciously?

TK: [Laughs.] Yes, I do. Someone said something close to this: I am always anxious but I have total confidence. I love it because I am always anxious when I start a design. It is like a journey or a mountain climb. I was always anxious about the climb. I didn’t know what I was going to run into. But it is an adventure. Ultimately, architecture is an adventure.