Company Profile
Olson Kundig Architects
Company Overview
Olson Kundig Architects is a Seattle-based architectural design firm led by Jim Olson, Tom Kundig, Kirsten R. Murray, and Alan Maskin. The 100+ person office works throughout the world on a broad range of projects including new and renovated residences, particularly for art collectors, mixed-use buildings, museums and exhibits, and cultural centers. In 2012, the firm launched a commercial line of hardware accessories. The firm is the recipient of the 2009 National Architecture Firm Award awarded by the American Institute of Architects. The firm’s accolades also include American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, national design awards from the American Institute of Architects, and international design awards from the International Interior Design Association as well as World Architecture News. Individually, the firm’s partners have been honored with some of architecture’s highest design awards including a National Design Award in Architecture Design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, an Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and named to the Wallpaper100. For two years in a row, the firm was named one of the Top Ten Most Innovative Companies in Architecture by Fast Company magazine. Recent books on the firm’s work include Jim Olson: Art in Architecture (Whatcom Museum/August Editions, 2013); Tom Kundig: Houses 2 (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011) Jim Olson Houses (The Monacelli Press, 2009); Tom Kundig: Houses (Princeton Architectural Press, 2006), and Art + Architecture: The Ebsworth Collection + Residence (William Stout Publishers, 2006).
Company History
Olson Kundig Architects began its creative existence with architect Jim Olson, whose work in the late 1960s explored the relationship between dwellings and the landscape they inhabit in the Northwest. Olson started the firm based on some simple ideas: that buildings can serve as a bridge between nature, culture and people, and that inspiring surroundings have a positive effect on people’s lives.
In 1996, Tom Kundig joined Olson as an owner, taking the firm to another level of creative exploration and helping it grow into an office with an international reputation. Alan Maskin and Kirsten Murray joined the owners group in 2008, continuing the evolution of the firm and furthering its commitment to the experience around architecture, articulated in exhibit design, interiors, and connections to urban and rural landscapes.
The firm now numbers over 100 employees. Olson Kundig Architects’ work, including museums, commercial design, academic buildings, exhibit design, interior design, places of worship and residences, often for art collectors, is now worldwide. The in-house interiors studio, founded in 2000, provides a full range of services including material selection, custom furniture design and purchasing capabilities. The interiors studio continues the long tradition of continuity between architecture and interiors. The office combines the capacity of a large firm with the intensity of a small one. The firm’s commitment to vigorous, critical design review sessions has infused its designers with a shared sense of commitment to every project.
Notable Accomplishments / Recognition
Among the firm’s accolades are the 2009 National AIA Architecture Firm Award (as Olson Sundberg Kundig Allen Architects), dozens of national, regional and local design awards from the American Institute of Architects, American Architecture Awards from the Chicago Athenaeum, Jim Olson’s 2007 Seattle Medal of Honor and Tom Kundig’s National Design Award from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt and his Academy Award in Architecture from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Jim Olson and Tom Kundig were both inducted into Interior Design Magazine’s Hall of Fame in 2012. The owners lecture extensively on design, regularly serve as university studio critics, and are board members for civic institutions and jury awards programs. The firm’s award-winning work has been widely exhibited in North America, and in Asia and Scotland, has been published extensively, including in The New York Times Magazine, Architectural Digest and Architectural Record, and has been featured numerous times on the covers of books and magazines.