Chicken Point Cabin by Olson Kundig | Photography by Aaron Leitz
During his recent visit to Australia, coinciding with Melbourne Design Week, est managing director Miffy Coady sat down with North American architect and Olson Kundig principal Tom Kundig.
In this conversation, Coady explores the influences that have shaped Kundig’s approach to residential architecture—from growing up around artists to the sites that have challenged him most, and how ‘gizmos’ have long been part of his design process. Reflecting on his recent book release, Kundig shares his hope of inspiring more architects and creatives on the same adventure, which he calls his favourite project—his entire career.
Your father was an architect, and initially you didn’t want to follow that path — but you’ve said growing up it was the artists around you who influenced you. Was there one artist in particular?
Tom Kundig: Yes. A family friend named Harold Balazs. He was an incredible sculptor and one of the hardest-working people I’ve ever met. He believed if you were going to make art, you had to physically make it yourself—weld it, lift it, paint it, build it. Watching him work taught me a lot about the culture of art, optimism, storytelling, and just enthusiasm for life. I knew pretty early on I wasn’t an artist, though. I appreciated artists, but I was more interested in science, physics especially. Architecture became this middle ground where creativity and engineering could come together.
You’ve spent four decades asking clients what they want from a building. Has anyone ever asked you what you design for yourself? What would it be like?
Tom Kundig: We’ve never done a brand new house, but if I did, it would be small. More like a discreet hut in a larger landscape—comfortable, super beautifully done, very precise. Almost like a Japanese or Swiss timepiece inside, but sitting in a big landscape where you can just be. On the outside, it would probably be a bit more rugged, but inside, it would be very carefully detailed and intimate.
You work across incredible sites in North America and around the world, often within quite extreme landscapes. Your early work especially carried this really rugged and raw material palette. How do you approach building on these landscape sites?
Tom Kundig: If the architecture could just go away, that would be ideal. That’s the premise—making something that feels like it isn’t really there. It doesn’t disappear, but it sits in the landscape in a way that feels natural and quiet. The landscape is already beautiful. My job is not to screw it up. And the problem is, when you see buildings in books or videos, you forget that they’re part of this much larger space. That relationship is the important thing.
Carbon Beach House by Olson Kundig | Photography by Joe Fletcher
Carbon Beach House by Olson Kundig | Photography by Joe Fletcher
Carbon Beach House by Olson Kundig | Photography by Joe Fletcher
Your work is so deeply shaped by the Pacific Northwest — the scale of it, the weather, the light. When you design elsewhere, do you ever feel like you’re working against your own instincts. I.e. You’ve designed in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Brazil, Austria. Is there a landscape that genuinely humbled you — one where you felt the site was smarter than you?
Tom Kundig: They’re all smarter than me. I always say my job is not to screw it up. There are places where I’ve thought, “I wonder if we should even be building here.” That’s what national parks are for—places without buildings are often more inspirational than ones with them. But if we do build, I try to make something quiet in that landscape.
Your kinetic architecture is often described in mechanical terms — leverage, counterweight, torque — but there’s something else going on when a person physically moves a wall or opens a roof. Are you designing a machine, or are you designing an emotional experience for the person turning the wheel?
Tom Kundig: Both, but it’s really about the emotional response. When someone opens a huge wall or moves a big element, the only reason it moves is that they’re doing it. They become part of the system. It’s very visceral. People suddenly realise they’re interacting with something that’s far bigger and heavier than them. There’s a story about a house where the kids came back as teenagers—trying to be all cool—and then they open these big elements, and instantly they’re like little kids again. Just laughing and amazed. That’s the point.
In a world that’s becoming increasingly automated, do people want to work with you for the gizmos? Do clients come to you wanting those moving elements?
Tom Kundig: I hope it becomes part of the process. But if there’s no reason for it, it becomes a gimmick. You have to ask: Is it important how you use the place? Does it actually change something meaningful? The best ideas come out of discussion. Chicken Point is a good example—standing on site, the client said, “Wouldn’t it be great if the whole front opened up?” And I thought, “Well, I think we can do that.”
Dalaro by Liljencrantz Design and Olson Kundig | Photography by Magnus Mårding
You can only save one building from the 20th century. Not a person — a building. Which one, and why?
Tom Kundig: Probably Scarpa’s Castelvecchio. Because it’s not a single-source building—it’s a restoration of a building by others, a living evolution. It shows how architecture isn’t just one-off objects. It’s a layering of history, improvement, and response. It touches on history and modernity, and even suggests a future. And it houses art, which is kind of perfect.
Rationalism or poetry: you always say it’s both. But when you’re alone in front of a blank page at the start of a project — which one actually shows up first?
Tom Kundig: Rational. Always rational. I think poetry comes out of the rational process, but I don’t start there. I’m not an artist in that sense. I approach it more like applied design—what is the problem, and how do you solve it in a way that also has some emotional impact.
Chicken Point Cabin by Olson Kundig | Photography by Aaron Leitz
Chicken Point Cabin by Olson Kundig | Photography by Aaron Leitz
Delta Shelter by Olson Kundig | Photography by Tim Bies and Olson Kundig
What do you want readers to take away from your recently released book, Tom Kundig: Complete Houses?
Tom Kundig: I’m not really an educator. But I see the books as a way of telling one person’s approach to architecture. Hopefully, it inspires other architects, clients, fabricators—just people in general—to see what’s possible when you make things. When I look back, I see it as an adventure. Life in the mountains made me realise things can be fragile, so you appreciate them more. I’ve been lucky. I worked hard, but there’s luck too.
We were all curious est living HQ. Do you have a favourite project?
Tom Kundig: I’m never going to answer that. People always ask that, but it’s a bit like asking who your favourite child is. Honestly, my favourite project is my career. That’s the project.
Outpost by Olson Kundig | Photography courtesy of Olson Kundig