Explore Tom Kundig’s unusual houses, from studios on wheels to cabins slotted into boulders

Peeking out from between sandbanks on a beach in New Zealand, incorporating a granite outcrop in the Stockholm Archipelago, or offering panoramic views of the Pacific in Malibu – homes by Tom Kundig tend to be memorable, and hundreds of them are showcased in a new monograph published by Monacelli, an imprint of Phaidon: Tom Kundig: Complete Houses.

Kundig, a principal/owner and founder of Seattle-based practice Olson Kundig, has spent some 40 years perfecting the art of creating the ideal home, starting with a series of cosy cabins in the US before building on six continents. He’s received some of the world’s highest design honours, and features in our very own Wallpaper* 400 as one of the key talents shaping creative America.

Explore 'Tom Kundig: Complete Houses'

The new book, by editor Dung Ngo, offers a deep dive into a world of beautifully thought-through, light-filled spaces, and shines a light on the architect’s approach, which combines continual exploration, risk-taking and reinvention.

‘Residential work is where my architecture practice began and continues to evolve,’ says Kundig. ‘Each home is a chance to test an idea, refine a detail, or take a risk. This book is a moment of reflection in my practice, an attempt to capture something that is always in motion.’

Ngo first met Kundig in 2006 to work on the architect’s first monograph, Tom Kundig: Houses. A ‘modest but impactful’ book, it contained all the houses Kundig had worked on until then – about 50 projects. Twenty years later, the architect’s output has mushroomed to over 460 residential projects.

All are featured in this new volume, which includes a detailed chronology of the projects, with 38 homes explored in depth, and 12 previously unseen completed homes. It is bound in vibrant cloth with an embossed architectural sketch, and housed in a slipcase featuring project photography.

‘For me, it’s simple: an extraordinary house actively embraces whatever the context is outside the doors and windows, in a beautifully choreographed, poetic way, so you break down that wall between the outside and the inside,’ explains Kundig to Ngo in one of a series of interviews included in the book.

‘It means the house should be a sculpture you walk through, that feels as if it’s connected to the outside,’ he continues. ‘It should be a much larger experience than just the perimeter of the place.’

This is certainly the case in projects such as The Pierre, a retreat nestled into a rocky outcrop in the San Juan Islands near Vancouver; a teak tree house offering treetop views of the surrounding jungle in Costa Rica; or Maxon Studios in Washington, which sits on railroad tracks that allow it to be moved.

The monograph will be followed by a companion volume in 2027, Tom Kundig: Complete Works, which will trace the influence of the architect’s residential designs on his other projects.