Seattle architect Tom Kundig known for daring architecture, basic style

You can put him in front of prestigious clients and give him loads of accolades and awards, but chances are good that Seattle architect Tom Kundig, 53, will still be wearing jeans.

"It's who I am," he said. "It's always been my character."

So when Men's Vogue photographs him later this summer for an article about his work?

"This will be interesting," he said, laughing. "If they dress me up in fancy-pants slipper shoes, I'll say, 'Will somebody please shoot me?' "

Meet Tom Kundig of Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects. His down-to-earth style and disarming personality almost seem to clash with his highbrow résumé — one riddled with big-name clients and daring projects and, most recently, the architecture design award from The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

As a result, Kundig will travel to Washington, D.C., this summer to be honored for his achievements.

"It's a big deal," Kundig said. "It's a deep honor for me. I'm pinching myself."

He's also likely thinking about what to pack. After all, most people don't wear denim when they're having breakfast in the White House with the first lady.

Born in California to Swiss immigrants, Kundig says he never wanted to be an architect, the profession of his father. Besides, in the first half of his life, he was too busy climbing mountains in Canada, Alaska and along the West Coast.

"When you climb mountains, you become viscerally attached to Earth forces," he said.

So, as a young student at the University of Washington, he decided to study physics and geophysics. It wasn't until Kundig started doing some soul searching, however, that he realized he wasn't in the right field.

Mountain climbing, he says, set his path straight. The large crevasses, the extreme heights and the sense of adventure — Kundig says he could see parallels between climbing and architecture.

When you're scaling a mountain, he says, it's not just about getting to the top, "it's about the elegance in how you get there."

And a house, he continues, isn't just about windows and doors, but windows and doors that make you feel something. For example, he says, "a window that opens in such a way that it gives you a little thrill."

In many ways, these guiding thoughts have molded Kundig's career, one punctuated by bold moves, daring design decisions and blueprints that border on the extreme.

Wondrous gizmos

In almost all of Kundig's projects are his "gizmos," or mechanical devices that turn everyday architectural elements into grand events.

Take the massive window made of 6 tons of glass and steel he designed for one home: Despite the window's weight, the owners' 6-year-old daughter was able to open it with ease.

"The idea is that every day we touch these things," Kundig said. "Why can't we re-imagine them?"

Daniel Friedman, dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Washington, says Kundig's buildings "are like 'wunderkammer' — a cabinet of wonders."

"We've lost sight of that in our culture," Friedman said. "Tom's work recovers wonder on a very intimate scale. He enriches the ordinary experience. And no one does it better."

A special kind of client

While about 40 percent of Kundig's work is commercial — he's working on a 37-story hotel-condo tower in Seattle (see related story); wineries in California; and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts in Ketchum, Idaho — the majority of his projects — and his passion — falls into the residential category.

Kundig's clients aren't conformists.

"People who hire me are also adventurers," he said. "You propose something like a 19-foot front door to them, and they say, 'Cool!' "

Seattle artist Carol Bobo approached Kundig in 1992 with a photograph of ruins in Guatemala as her inspiration.

"I wanted to do a concrete, steel and glass home," Bobo said. "He said, 'I know exactly what you want. I can do it.' "

The result — a massive dwelling that Kundig coined "Studio House," perched on a tree-lined bluff facing Puget Sound — is what Bobo describes as "brilliance."

"What Tom is doing is so unique that it takes a particular type of client to participate in this process," Bobo said.

First, she says, one needs to be "somebody ready to push the envelope, even when you don't exactly know what the envelope has inside of it, and you need to have a sense of humor and be able to endorse irony."

Yin and yang design

That irony, Kundig explains, stems from an old architectural principle known as "prospect and refuge," which nods to our once-primitive way of life.

Prospect, he says, "is why views are important to us." (Think of the hillside fortresses thousands of years ago.) Refuge is "what makes us comfortable." (Think of a cave, safe from enemies.)

But great architecture, Kundig says, should incorporate both of these qualities.

"It's the yin and yang of our experience," he said.

"In order to see black, you must see white. To be comfortable, you have to be uncomfortable."

So when he designs floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the jagged shores of Puget Sound, he incorporates cozier spaces.

"Rooms have to be emotionally balanced," he said.

Kundig admits that when he finishes a project, it can be difficult to say goodbye. Like an old friend who moves away, he misses the homes he designs.

"Fortunately, about 90 percent of the clients I work with become friends," he says. "So I'm able to go back and visit and see them."

And when he does, he says he's delighted by what he finds.

"It's great when the owners move in and take over, letting their personalities emerge," he said.

"I see myself as the base, and they're the melody."

Since his days as a student at UW, Kundig has called Seattle — Wallingford, Ravenna, Capitol Hill and Magnolia, specifically — home.

His current home, which he shares with his wife of 17 years, Jeannie Kundig, a real-estate agent with Lake & Co. Real Estate, is on Queen Anne. He's named it "Hot Rod House."

No, it doesn't have flames painted on the siding, but it is daring in its own right.

"It's got prospect and refuge: a view of the Olympics and a bit of a fear factor," Kundig said. "The house is like our cave."

Nowadays, there isn't much mountain climbing in this architect's life, though he still counts it as a passion, even if it's a somewhat closeted one.

"My wife actually thinks it's the stupidest thing you can imagine," he said. "She put the kibosh on it. And I understand. When things go wrong, things go wrong very quickly and badly."

Recently, someone approached Kundig at a social function to praise him for his work.

"I turned to my wife and said, 'Can you believe that?' " he said. "I mean, I'm just a hayseed from the backwoods."

It's that unassuming and somewhat self-deprecating style that clients say they are drawn to.

Easy to work with

"He doesn't let his ego get in the way, which I think is why he's so easy to work with collaboratively," said Catherine Skinner, who hired Kundig to reconfigure a 1910 Capitol Hill office building that houses her 3,800-square-foot art studio.

Perhaps that's a reason, talent aside, that his phone is ringing off the hook these days.

Potential clients include celebrities (there's a good chance you've seen some of them in the movies) and people from Seattle and all over the world.

"I got a call from someone in Islamabad recently," Kundig said.

Fellow architect and colleague Ed Weinstein says this is Kundig's "moment."

"It has been a time of the maturation of his talent," Weinstein said. "As his work gets recognized, clients are seeking him out — clients with ambitions for great architecture."

Kundig doesn't describe his work as art, but as a calling.

"If you can add meaning to the world with your vocation," he said, "why wouldn't you want to do that?"

He's up for the challenge — as long as he can do the work in a pair of bluejeans.

Sarah Jio is a Seattle-based freelance writer: sarah@sarahjio.com.