Tom Kundig is the recipient of the 2008 National Design Award in Architecture Design, awarded by the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He has won eight National AIA Institute Honor Awards and is a recipient of a 2007 Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which recognizes architects whose work is characterized by a strong personal direction. In 2004, Kundig was selected as one of eight North American Emerging Architects by the Architectural League of New York and was elected to the College of Fellows by the American Institute of Architects (AIA). He was a finalist for the 2005 National Design Award for Architecture, and he is a recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship. Architectural Record has named two of Kundig’s projects Record Houses – the Rolling Huts in 2008 and Delta Shelter in 2006. To date, Kundig has been awarded a total of thirty-three AIA awards, and over fifty awards total. The firm received the 2009 National AIA Architecture Firm Award (as Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects).
Kundig’s work encompasses residential, commercial and institutional and is located around the world. His signature detailing and raw, kinetic construction explore new forms of engagement with site and landscape, which he frames in the workings of unique, building-size machines. In his houses, which are quickly becoming recognized as modern-day classics, brute strength and tactile refinement are held in perfect equilibrium. Current projects include the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, Idaho, the Burke Museum for Natural History and Culture at the University of Washington in Seattle, urban infill and two large hotel and mixed-use projects in downtown Seattle, the T Bailey Offices in Anacortes, Washington, and private residences in Spain and throughout North America.
In 2006, Princeton Architectural Press released Tom Kundig: Houses – which featured Studio House, the Brain, Chicken Point Cabin, Hot Rod House, and Delta Shelter. Kundig has been published in over 250 publications worldwide, including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Architectural Record, Dwell, A + U, and Architectural Digest. Seven of his projects have been featured in the New York Times. His work has been featured in many books on architecture, including The American House (Phaidon, 2008), The Good Office: Green Design on the Cutting Edge (Collins, 2008) and the most recent edition of The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture (2008).
Kundig has lectured extensively on design and served as a university studio critic throughout the United States and in Japan (at Harvard University, Syracuse University, the University of Texas and the University of Oregon, among others). His award-winning work has been widely exhibited in North America, at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, Syracuse University, the Seattle AIA, and at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. A monograph on the work of the firm, Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects: Architecture, Art and Craft, was published by the Monacelli Press in 2003. Kundig’s undergraduate and graduate architecture degrees are from the University of Washington.