I'm Kevin Kudo-King. I am owner principal Olsen Kundig in Seattle Washington in the USA,
I was one of the design leads here on this project.
The Pacific Northwest is a really special place I moved here about 25 years ago from the desert,
obviously what most people know here is it rains a lot you know nine months out of the year one
thing that's kind of a side effect of the rain is the quality of light here is quite special.
I've heard it referred to as liquid light.
So the client had a brief where he's like I'm an inventor I've had companies fluid dynamic
companies, I'm an engineer, my passions are engines and he plops a book you know
about this thick full of different types of historic engines. "This is what I'm into and
I would love for you guys to create kind of an experiment space for me that I can live in".
This is kind of a special little neighbourhood it's called Leschi it's right on Lake Washington.
There's a ton of sailboat races that happen, it's got a tall hill behind it that blocks
the sun as it sets on the west, so this is really an east-facing house.
First of all you arrive at a big front door it's yellow, it's actually a very specific yellow,
it's the colour of the Caterpillar Heavy Equipment yellow, that front door has a
gizmo that he created, it's based on the locks that you would see out on bank vault.
As you come in the front door stair is kind of behind this steel bar grate-grille that's
usually used in industrial settings and then you come into the house itself and it's just
one giant double-height space with these black granite counters that is for not only living
he does experiments there as well so there's a bunsen burner on the island for example.
You discover this view all the way through looking to Lake Washington,
that view pulls you forward into the living room.
At that point, if you're going to stay in the living room you're able to slide open a giant
glass panel door and there's a glass guard rail inboard of that inside, so you don't have a deck,
your living room is your deck, you can open it up during the summer months.
It all cantilevers off a 30 inch diameter steel pipe that is also the fireplace,
right above that there's a loft area and that's the think space.
Down below there's the mechanical room, this was very important from day one,
he wanted to express all the mechanics and the systems, wanted to celebrate who put it in,
who made it. So all the names of the subcontractor's that's made every system
the electrician, the low voltage ,the hydronic heating, is all labelled down there its signed,
who did it, when they did it and it's all beautifully composed they took a lot of pride
in the work, they don't normally have this happen where someone wants to show it off.
The house kind of blurs the boundary between living in it and experimenting and creating.
There's dual purposes almost to every space here,
the objects that are around are little models for building, molecules,
even the gardens around the house are blends of different grasses that our firm helped them
find so it comes out seasonally and after it comes out you cut it all down, it's all a lot
of fun and I think it's important to remember to continue to learn you know still be a kid.
On the materiality of the house we've got the weathered steel on the outside but
then we have the exact same steel that we clad elements on the interior with,
but that's been waxed so it stays the natural finish that it was when it came out of the mill
you see the roll marks of how it rolled out, you see how it was manufactured, we love it.
The inside is concrete on the floors
in addition to the light-painted walls we have some dark walls that come through the
house and the cabinets themselves are the same material, it's like a very dense particle board
and then it's been stained and then it has a very flat clear lacquer over the top of it.
But this is normally what people put wood veneer over so you don't see it,
this is like the substrate.
This is the kind of stuff we love to do you assemble the parts and pieces together into
an overall composition, it's allowed to weather and once it weathers that pretty much protects it.
It feels as if it's always been here.
There's some little surprises here in the house details that we can't take any credit
for actually, there's these beautiful little push button on and off switches,
for the lights, the buttons themselves are Circa 1920-1930, the electrician found them.
So when we do our designs we leave enough leeway for happenstance to come along later in the hand
of the craftsman to touch the project and take it somewhere that we would not take it on our own.
Many architects don't do it that way it's about their vision but for us it's about
creating something that has more layers of meaning and the more people that can
touch it and come together the more interesting it is for us.
This house is about how things work, so for us, the experience or journey through architecture
is even more important than if you stand back and look at it and say oh it's a cool building.
We want it to unfold, we don't really want you to get it all in as a one-liner. It's about
peeling back everything behind and taking a look at that and having it be part of your daily life.
Oftentimes we'll drive through the city whether it's our city or others and we'll
see projects that are under construction and we'll think wow it's really beautiful you see
all the parts and pieces, how it's being built. A few months later you drive by and
they've covered it all and it's not beautiful anymore, so that's what this house is about.
There's a care and a craft how everything comes together.