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In an era when buildings have become increasingly mediated by screens and systems, the work of architect Tom Kundig insists on something almost analog: that architecture is most powerful when you can see how it works.
A Kundig house might be a steel box in the desert, a timber structure in the Pacific Northwest, or a pavilion on the Gulf Coast. It is identifiable not by shape or silhouette, but experience: it is architecture that moves, opens, pivots, slides, reveals, and makes you physically aware of the landscape around you. That distinction is important to understanding why the architect has become one of the most influential of his generation.
Tom joined the Seattle practice that became Olson Kundig in 1986 and became an owner in 1994, eventually assuming its leadership as principal and owner. His formal education was at the University of Washington, where he earned a BA in Environmental Design, magna cum laude, followed by a Master of Architecture.
Yet his practice has always seemed less interested in academic doctrine than in physical discovery. He is fascinated by what happens when buildings are subjected to the same forces as the people who inhabit them: gravity, weather, friction, movement, heat, cold. His famous kinetic mechanisms—rolling doors, pivoting walls, manually operated windows and mechanical hardware—aren’t technological tricks. They turn the occupants into participants, their homes a continuous study in how to grapple with a world in flux.
His clients are often collectors, entrepreneurs, and design-minded families willing to approach a home as something more than the sum of its parts. On a Washington property for Shane and Tasha Atchison, sliding walls, hydraulic mechanisms, and an outdoor courtyard transform idle domesticity into something like inhabiting a piece of land art. This approach is particularly evident in recent projects. Shearwater, a family residence in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, raises the house 23 feet above a surge zone. Rather than hiding the requirements of flood resilience, the architect makes the elevation part of the architecture, using steel piers, weathering steel, a cantilevered screened porch, and passive ventilation to turn environmental constraint into an organizing principle.
A pavilion he designed to enclose a rare Jean Prouvé demountable house, on Long Island’s North Fork, is similarly site-specific. There are no motors or automated controls: the structure has to be manually rolled between the elements and a protected interior enclosure. The project turns preservation into an active architectural problem: how do you save history without entombing it behind glass?
This question takes on an interesting challenge when applied to hospitality. One&Only Moonlight Basin is the luxury brand's first American property, in Big Sky, Montana, with architecture and interiors by Olson Kundig. The resort is conceived less as an object in the mountains than as a framework for experiencing them. Low-slung buildings frame views, create shelter, and allow the surrounding forest and peaks to remain the dominant presence. Since its opening, Olson Kundig has increasingly worked with hospitality brands including Aman, Raffles, Six Senses, Auberge, and Four Seasons, building out a vision for
At the same time, he has continued to pursue institutional work. Olson Kundig was selected to design the Seattle University Museum of Art following philanthropist Richard Hedreen's $300 million art gift to the university. The museum is scheduled to break ground in 2026 and open in 2028.
Tom Kundig has built a global practice by treating small projects as laboratories where he might test materials, details, mechanisms, and ideas before those discoveries inform larger projects. The firm even employs an on-staff “Gizmologist,” Phil Turner, who collaborates with Tom on the most technically challenging of the firm’s engineering endeavors.
Tom’s fifth monograph, Tom Kundig: Complete Houses, published in 2025, is a testament to his enduring philosophy. The tome gathers 462 residential projects and makes explicit how central houses remain to his practice. Even after four decades and work across six continents, Tom Kundig continues to regard the house as a place for research and reinvention.
