Olson Kundig Architects

Tom Kundig at Olson Kundig has designed the house we are building in Salt Lake City. The principal design objective to solve for: creating a "single-level" main living space on a steeply inclined site, while taking advantage of the 360 degree views from the site. Secondary objective: a house that opens to the outside during the warm weather; seamless transition between interior and exterior space. Tom's design has attained both objectives brilliantly. My principal concern in originally hiring Tom had been that -- because he is such a celebrated "starchitect" -- he would view the project as our funding his sculpture, rather than him building our house. But the reality was much different -- he is down to earth, took all our objectives seriously, very responsive, a joy to work with. The same is true of the team Tom has pulled together at his company to work on the project, in particular Paul Schlachter, the associate architect assigned to the project. An enjoyable, satisfying design process, and a beautiful, intelligent, design result.