Kundig is the winner of the
2008 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture. Facing off with formidable future-forward talents of Weiss/Manfredi and the industrial chic of Lo-Tek, Kundig's graceful mechanics set in nature won out.
As Mark Robbins, Dean of the Syracuse University School of Architecture and jury member noted, "All the jurors responded to the very direct poetry of the work that comes from the juxtaposition of late 19th-century industrial forms against the landscape. He [Kundig] has a great sensitivity to landscape—"
Elsewhere Kundig has been praised for his exploration and reinvention of parts of architecture that are overlooked or “forgotten,” such as doors, windows or stairs, as well as for his use of kinetic architectural elements.
To date, Kundig has been awarded a total of twenty-seven AIA awards, and over fifty awards total. In 2006, Princeton Architectural Press released Tom Kundig: Houses– a book which introduced the details of Kundig’s work to an international audience.
Kundig's buildings possess enduring beauty:
'There's a tradition in Switzerland—in direct parallel, obviously things like a Swiss army knife—both beautiful and also functional. The beauty also helps the function of the thing. I always thought that Swiss design has a foot in both, first the function of the piece then the beauty of the piece came out of that function. You can see that thread in Zumthor's work or Herzog and de Meuron. Celebrating that beauty and function is architecture for me.'
Kundig, who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, cites the vast, open natural and industrial landscapes of his childhood as an enduring influence:
"The landscape probably had the biggest impact on me as a child. Also my parents were from Switzerland and we'd go back to Switzerland all the time—of course the Swiss environment is all about the mountains and the landscape so it's kind of a natural connection...'
It is no wonder the architect has developed a reputation for his understanding of the 'Great American Outdoors'—so what happens when he's challenged with an urban setting?
'The question is— that's great! What about the cultural landscape? What about the city? I've been doing more and more work in the city, and I would say that there's a parallel exploration of the city—very similar to natural setting: you're trying to pick up the context of the place, and the context of it in the city and where the city is culturally and historically— and of course the function that the client had in mind. You have this stew and you put it together in this functional poetic way so that the architecture happens.'
Case-in-point: the new site of Sedgwick Rd, a Seattle-based advertising firm, was in a old machinery building. Kundig and his team took inventory of all the features slated for demolition: steel I-beams, first-growth wood beams, original wood doors and windows, aluminum light fixtures, a steel crane... They stored them until they figured out how they could rework them into the final design. The "patina" that Kundig often strives for evolved out of this marriage of the historical and the immediate.
