Each one of architectural firm Olson Kundig’s creations is in open dialogue with its environment, often integrating oversized glass doors that open wide to the outside world or sliding steel panels to close them up and make them feel safe and secure. The Washington state-based firm, consisting of architects Tom Kundig and Jim Olson, feels quintessentially Pacific Northwest in its choice of raw, rugged materials that can stand up to extreme weather conditions, from wildfire-prone plains and heavy snow pack to rainforests and windswept coasts.

Seattle Space Needle Renovation

While a $100 million renovation of Seattle’s iconic Space Needle may sound like a project that could dramatically change the landmark’s form, it will look much the same in the city’s skyline when it’s complete. Olson Kundig is adding to the experience with floor-to-ceiling glass in both the interior and exterior spaces, including a rotating glass floor on the restaurant level for new downward-facing views of the structure. The architects collaborated with the original structural engineers, architectural historians and preservationists to remain true to the Space Needle’s spirit while removing clutter, replacing the safety cage system with glass barriers for better views.

Cabin at Longbranch

Designed by architect Jim Olson for his own personal use, Cabin at Longbranch is set on the Puget Sound among fir trees, renovating a 200-square-foot bunkhouse built in 1959 into a beautiful weekend house that reuses and reintegrates the original structure into a modernized context. What was previously three pavilions linked by wooden platforms has been joined together under one roof, framing large glass walls facing views of the water.

Sol Duc Cabin

Many of Olson Kundig’s structures transform in some way, opening and closing themselves to the environment for safety, privacy or protection from the elements. This 350-square-foot cabin is envisioned as “a small perch for its occupant,” raised above the soggy rainforest landscape in remote Washington State like a bird’s nest with a view onto the Sol Duc River. The owner and his wife like to use the place periodically for steelhead fishing, and close it up safely when they’re not around. The large shutters slide on rails designed for barn doors and are operated manually with custom steel rods, making the building virtually indestructible.

Glass Farmhouse

You don’t often see glittering glass buildings in rural locations. The owners of this property on a high-altitude plateau wanted a refuge inspired by Philip Johnson’s Glass House, opening up to the wheat fields and surrounding mountains, steps away from their barn. The shed roof of the home takes its shape from that of the barn. While it might look chilly, the house is made with high-efficiency glass and sits on a concrete slab supported by a concrete foundation to absorb and release thermal mass.

Chicken Point Cabin

A massive 19-foot-tall glass garage door opens to the lake outside manually via an industrial-style pulley mechanism in this concrete block cabin, which also boasts a 4-foot diameter steel fireplace the architects call ‘the bong.’ The door is large enough to accommodate long skis, an important feature for this vacation cabin in a snowy location. The cabin sleeps ten and is made of low-maintenance materials that will take on a patina over time.

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Starchitect Spotlight Olson Kundigs Crystalline Modern Sensibilities

Kinetic architecture, verdant cascading balconies, timber-frame skyscrapers and double-helix bridges: Beijing- and Salzburg-based multidisciplinary firm Penda brings all sorts of refreshing ideas to the worlds of architecture, landscape and interior design. Founded by Chris Precht and Dayong Sun, the youthful firm subverts norms and commands attention with its surprising solutions, and we’ll likely see a lot more stunning projects from them materializing in the future.

Tel Aviv Arcades

This September, Penda teased architecture fans with exciting images of a new project, the Tel Aviv Arcades, without providing any information. “Excited to share one of our current projects with you: a residential high rise in Tel Aviv,” they wrote on Facebook. “Here a preview, more soon!” Over 8,000 people liked the photo showing the building in profile, with a cascade of balconies providing natural light and green space to every floor.

Tree Tower Toronto

Drawing inspiration from a true classic, Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Toronto, Pends presents their design for ‘Tree Tower Toronto,’ an 18-story timber-framed residence. It’s a beautiful example of the high-rise wooden building trend. “ur cities are an assembly of steel, concrete and glass,” they say. “If you walk through the city and suddenly see a tower made of wood and plants, it will create an interesting contrast. The warm, natural appearance of wood and the plants growing on its facade bring the building to life and could be a model for environmental friendly developments and sustainable extensions of our urban landscape.”

Hongkun Art Auditorium

Located in Beijing, Penda’s interiors for ‘Art Auditorium,’ subdividing the multi-use space with curving, organic wooden cutouts that are almost Art Nouveau in nature, contrasting with a heavy, minimalist concrete facade. The firm inserted what they call the ‘art box,’ an all-in-one wooden built-in, which adds arches mirrors and steps to small areas for lectures, readings, small exhibitions and an area for trading artwork.

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Terraced Balconies Double Helix Bridges Spotlight On Penda Architecture

Acclaimed Japanese architect Kengo Kuma brings traditional Japanese building techniques and aesthetics into the 21st century with dynamic structures making creative use of wooden elements. Known for his gridded installations and unusual ways of stacking and assembling small pieces of wood, the architect often works with joinery techniques that negate the need for any metal fasteners.

Japan House in São Paulo, Brazil

Three iterations of the ‘Japan House,’ an outreach initiative by the Japanese government aiming to nurture a deeper understanding and appreciation of Japan in international communities, are planned for São Paulo, Los Angeles and London, respectively. Kengo Kuma recently completed the first one in Brazil, creating a tranquil and hospitable space within the bustling metropolis with one of his signature facades, this one made of cypress.

GC Prostho Museum Research Center

An old Japanese toy called ‘Cidori’ consists of an assembly of wooden sticks with unusual joints that allow you to expand and contract the toy by twisting the sticks; no nails or other metal fasteners are necessary to hold it together. Kuma translates this concept to architecture with the GC Prostho Museum Research Center in Japan’s Aichi Prefecture. “Jun Sao, the structural engineer for the project, conducted a compressive and flexure test to check the strength of this system, and verified that even the device of a toy could be adapted to ‘big’ buildings,” says Kuma. “This architecture shows the possibility of creating a universe by combining small units like toys with your own hands. We worked on the project in the hope that the era of machine-made architectures would be over, and human beings would build again by themselves.”

One @ Tokyo

A facade of criss-crossed wooden beams gives the extruded cement panels on the front of the ONE@Tokyo hotel a more dynamic appearance. The architect wanted to “recall the rather rough but still approachable quality of this area,” which has historically been an industrial neighborhood full of small factories, but the beams also suggest abstracted tree branches as if to create a forest in a highly urbanized area.

Stacked Timber Museum

Stacked volumes clad in oversized wooden screens call to mind the childhood toy Lincoln Logs at the Odunpazari Modern Art Museum in Turkey. Kuma takes inspiration from the scale of traditional Ottoman wooden houses, and references the fact that the neighborhood is known as Odunpazari, which translates to ‘wood market’ in Turkish.

Towada Community Plaza

The series of gables in staggered sizes and angles seen on the exterior of the Towada Community Plaza aims to echo the rooflines of houses in the residential area surrounding it, helping it to blend seamlessly into the neighborhood. Wainscot panels are applied to the facade with spaces in between to add some warmth to the glass walls, and screen sunlight. Inside, undulating wooden floors made of cut and stacked plywood create a topographical playscape.

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Starchitect Spotlight 9 Wooden Wonders By Kengo Kuma Associates

Based in Basel, Switzerland, the architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron is known for dramatic, monumental Modernist structures free of frivolity, expanding over the years from simple geometric silhouettes to more complex and dynamic shapes. Each of their buildings is almost like an oversized sculpture, some rising high above street level or cantilevering at striking angles while others, like their recent Berggruen campus, lie low and flat. These 10 projects represent some of the firm’s most iconic and memorable works.

Berggruen Institute, Los Angeles, California

The firm conceived this new campus for the Berggruen Institute overlooking Los Angeles as a “landscape vision,” building on only a small area of the 447-acre site to keep 90% of it open and natural. Built along a mountain ridge in the Santa Monica mountains, the campus includes an elevated ‘frame’ surrounding a large courtyard garden and spherical lecture hall. It will act as a private educational forum for scholars and leaders in various fields working to “provide critical analysis and new ideas that will shape political, economic and social institutions.”

56 Leonard Street Skyscraper, New York City

Construction of Herzog & de Meuron’s latest New York City skyscraper is complete, and the firm has released a stunning time lapse of the building process. This structure is envisioned as a stack of individual houses arranged in a Jenga-like formation, giving it a pixelated appearance. This arrangement also creates a series of terraces and projecting balconies on every level.

Elbphilharmonie, Hamburg, Germany

At $900 million, the price tag for Herzog & de Meuron’s Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg is undeniably astronomical, but many in the city – and the international architecture community – say it’s worthwhile. Positioned on top of a 19th-century warehouse, the new structure glitters in a series of buoyant waves, echoing the water of the adjacent Elbe River. The 26-floor, 700,000-square-foot complex features a sweeping 269-foot escalator, performance halls, a main auditorium and a rooftop terrace.

1111 Lincoln Road, Miami, Florida

Helping to popularize a trend of high-design parking garages, 1111 Lincoln Road is a stunning, angular concrete structure positioned in one of Miami’s most active pedestrian areas, overlooking the city’s iconic Art Deco architecture. “Jacques Herzog stated that this building will reinterpret the essence of Tropical Modernism, and it somehow reminds me of the modern movement in Brazil, with raw structures providing shade, while containing smaller enclosing sub-elements,” the architects explain. “The slabs stand over a set of irregular columns, giving a sense of a precarious equilibrium. These columns also cast different shadows, giving more character to the facade.”

M.H. De Young Museum, San Francisco, California

Reviving an 1895 museum that was destroyed by the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco dramatically departs from the visuals of its predecessor, keeping only historic elements like sphinxes and original palm trees and taking on a monumental silhouette. Its inverted pyramid-shaped tower twists atop its ground-level roof, making it a landmark from a distance. Materials like stone, copper and wood help merge it with its park-like environment.

Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain

For the TEA cultural center in Spain, Herzog and de Meuron wanted to interfuse and interflow various activities and spaces within the center, cutting a new public path diagonally through the complex connected to the top of the General Serrador Bridge. The triangular space at the center is a new public plaza open and accessible to everyone in the city, featuring a cafe and restaurant along with the capability to become an open-air cinema. “The spatial interplay between inside and outside integrates rather than separates the very diverse urban landscapes which are so fascinating in Santa Cruz. The new cultural centre is therefore not only a place of encounter for people but also a place of intersection for the landscape of the contemporary city, the old city with its skyline along the Barranco and the archaic topography of the Barranco itself.”

Beijing ‘Bird’s Nest’ Olympic Stadium, China

Completed in 2008, the national stadium in Beijing sits in the center of the Olympic complex, and like many Olympic structures once the Games are over, it has reportedly fallen into disuse and disrepair. In its prime, it was one of the most complex stadiums ever built, and it was especially impressive at night, when illuminated from within. Taking inspiration from Chinese ceramics, it integrates criss-crossing steel beams to hide the supports for the retractible roof, which was later removed from the design. Still, those beams remain its most striking and notable feature.

Feltrinelli Porta Volta

A long, gabled volume with a gridded exterior stretches down a Milan street, hosting a research center and offices for Fondazione Giangiacamo Feltrinelli. Situated within the city’s Ports Volta district, the elongated building is all white and glass, with glazing continuing right up its 5-story facade onto its roof. A strip of greenery stretches from the boulevard to its rear entrance. “The new buildings are inspired by the simplicity and generous scale of historic Milanese architecture such as the Ospedale Maggiore, the Rotunda della Besana the Lazzaretto and Sfrozesco Castle,” says Herzog & de Meuron.

VitraHaus

Another instant Herzog & de Meuron classic utilizing gabled typologies is VitraHaus, commissioned by home design company Vitra to present their home collection on their campus in Weil am Rhein, between the border of Switzerland and Germany. 12 ‘houses’ are stacked together into a five-story structure, with five houses at the base and seven more stacked on top of them. Some are cantilevered up to 49 feet, and all of them feature glazed ends to show off Vitra’s interiors.

The Tanks at the Tate Modern, London

‘The Tanks’ are a series of underground gallery and performance spaces beneath the Tate Modern Museum in London, converted from former oil storage spaces by Herzog and de Meuron. In a previous life, the space the gallery occupies was a power station. The architecture firm transformed the raw industrial spaces without disguising their origins, giving them a vague dystopian feel.