house to death, and hopefully to call me two or three years later and say the place is just getting better and better. It’s what I do this stuff for: to be involved with a landscape and with these personalities.” On the influence of artist Harold Balazs: “Sometimes you just luck out in life and you meet a force of nature. I benefited tremendously from my family’s friendship with sculptor Harold Balazs. A sculptor and humanitarian, Harold instilled in my youth a sense of courage and enthusiasm to embrace this lucky moment we have on earth. As a kid I watched fantastic sculptures being fabricated at his shop and home in Mead, Washington. I witnessed his experiments and ideas with different medium and materials and how all of it related to the culture and politics of our time. He said to me out of the blue: ‘If you want to see what art can be, look at hot rods.’ This was around 1968. The point he was making was they were challenging the status quo and re-inventing the commodities with their own ideas and craft. He saw their craft as an incredible source of inspiration for his work, and that left a lasting impression.” "One is tempted to label Kundig's architecture as an example of Northwestern regionalism, yet his houses built in other geographical and climatic settings respond appropriately to these different conditions." "I believe Tom's success is grounded in the relaxedness and centeredness of one that devoutly performs a strong and personal vocation, which allows him to master the personas that he chooses to present. Rejecting the self-indulgent, Tom doesn't shy away from the profession's extremes of making a personal work dedicating his efforts to his clients." "Tom's larger contributions should also be acknowledged; his public works of architecture will bring inspired spaces with intense connections of material and detail to the joy of a greater number of individuals in the future. His positive mental thoughts, his core values, perhaps these are the conception of a 'spirit of architecture', which is passed on and thrives in continuity and zeal." Recognition and awards Kundig is recipient of numerous awards and honors including the prestigious National Design Award in Architecture Design from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (2008). Kundig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007. 14 projects by Kundig have been recognized by The