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James O’Mara<\/p>\nAbove: A vacation home in Valle de Guadalupe, on Mexico\u2019s Baja Peninsula, designed by architect Tom Kundig of Olson Kundig with Matiz Estudio. Sculpture by Teodoro Huerta.<\/p>\n
Valle de Guadalupe, at the northern end of Mexico\u2019s Baja Peninsula, is a luminous desert basin, its sandy soil the color of moon dust. At night, thanks to low humidity and minimal light pollution, you feel as if you\u2019re in a planetarium. It\u2019s rimmed by mountains, with the Pacific Ocean to the west, which gives the valley a Mediterranean microclimate, one that has fostered, with an assist from irrigation, a vibrant wine culture: It is Mexico\u2019s answer to Napa. Only two hours from San Diego when the traffic gods are smiling, it has become a destination for weekend escapes, with a quiet, haunting, almost otherworldly landscape, still rough around the edges, interspersed with vineyards and close to the beach, all set to a norte\u00f1o soundtrack.<\/p>\n
The Seattle-based architect Tom Kundig had never heard of the region before he started going there a few years ago. His inaugural visit came via a roadtrip from Southern California with clients, a couple with two young children. Having roadtripped with Kundig myself (across the wide expanse of northern Utah from Salt Lake City to the Bonneville Salt Flats), I know the excitement that radiates from him upon entering new territory, especially if it happens to be extreme or forbidding\u2014the very sort of places where Kundig, one of America\u2019s foremost contemporary residential architects, loves to build. Of his initial encounter with the Valle de Guadalupe, he says, \u201cI was so charged up going to this new place. And going there on a roadtrip. That\u2019s the way to experience a landscape\u2014so much better than flying.\u201d<\/p>\n
James O’Mara<\/p>\n
Kundig at work in 2011.<\/p>\n
Kundig\u2019s enthusiasm turned to passion when the couple steered onto an unpromisingly ragged dirt road, bumping along to a forlorn, undeveloped piece of ground. It was, he says, \u201ca clean sheet of paper,\u201d the perfect tabula rasa upon which to practice some design magic in the creation of what would become El Grove: a welcoming desert compound for a growing family, right in the dusty heart of Valle de Guadalupe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a playfulness in Tom\u2019s work. It\u2019s techno-surrealist, in a way.\u201d\u2014Robert M. Rubin <\/p>\n
Kundig, who recently turned 71, grew up not far from another high desert, in Spokane, Washington. His Swiss-born father, Moritz Kundig, was an architect\u2014which, naturally, meant that the young Tom resisted the notion of becoming one himself. As a kid he apprenticed with Harold Balazs, a Mead, Washington\u2013based sculptor whose motto, in some ways, became his own: \u201cTranscend the bullshit.\u201d Between Balazs and his father, Kundig was immersed in high modernist tradition, but he also got deep into Kustom Kulture: those souped-up hot rods of such Southern Californians as Ed \u201cBig Daddy\u201d Roth and Von Dutch. He also absorbed the raw architectural vernacular of eastern Washington\u2019s farming and mining structures\u2014unassuming, machinelike buildings redolent of American endeavor and industry.<\/p>\n
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Courtesy of Olson Kundig<\/p>\n
Kundig\u2019s sketch of the Valle de Guadalupe home, which is designed around a series of huts and built of cinder block and blackened steel.<\/p>\n
Kundig brought these disparate strands together when he got over his reluctance to follow in his father\u2019s footsteps, bringing a unique brand of daredevilry to architecture. In his personal life he became renowned for neck-risking exploits, like high-elevation skiing and tooling around Argentina on a BMW 1200.<\/p>\n
He brought a similar fearlessness to his design work, creating boundary-pushing houses such as the award-winning Chicken Point Cabin in Idaho, where he incorporated a 20-by-30-foot glass-and-steel wall that could be raised, like a colossal garage door, with a few turns of a flywheel.<\/p>\n
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C\u00e9sar B\u00e9jar<\/p>\n
In the great room, stained oak chairs by Sado Estudio surround a custom dining table. Sofa by Casa Blanca; custom kitchen island in Lapitec stone; sculptures by Santos N\u00e1jera.<\/p>\n
Gizmos like that one became an early Kundig signature. \u201cThere\u2019s always a certain playfulness in Tom\u2019s work,\u201d says the architectural historian and cultural entrepreneur Robert M. Rubin, who owns the modernist Parisian landmark Maison de Verre, designed in 1928 by Pierre Chareau. \u201cIt\u2019s techno-surrealist in a way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yet always there is nature, an abiding love. \u201cThe land,\u201d Kundig insists, \u201cis more important than the architecture.\u201d It\u2019s this literally grounded point of view that has made him a counterbalance to 21st-century starchitect mania. He\u2019s not about branding, blobs, or asymptotes. There\u2019s no Howard Roarkian aggrandizement. \u201cHe acts like a normal, gee-whiz architecture buff,\u201d Rubin observes.<\/p>\n
Kundig\u2019s buildings are low-key yet lyrical, rugged yet refined, earthy yet ethereal. More than 460 of these residential wonders are included in his recently published Complete Houses (Monacelli), a whopping monograph of his globe-spanning work with the firm Olson Kundig, which he leads with architect Jim Olson. That book will be followed next year by Complete Works, which showcases nonresidential projects. (Full disclosure: I wrote the keynote essay for Kundig\u2019s 2020 book, Working Title, which featured everything from wineries to skyscrapers.)<\/p>\n
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C\u00e9sar B\u00e9jar<\/p>\n
A Douglas fir and steel canopy shelters the outdoor bar and terrace, which overlooks the Sierra Blanca mountain range. Chaises and sofas by Terra Outdoor; terra-cotta vases by Rodolfo Serna.<\/p>\n
In the latest book\u2019s preface, Kundig writes of the \u201cgentle unraveling of ego beneath the weight of something boundless, ancient, and enduring\u201d\u2014the eternal pleasure of landscape. Such is the experience at El Grove, where, he says, \u201cyou have to go outside to go inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is thanks to an ingeniously simple agenda that breaks the traditional elements of a house\u2014the living area, the bedrooms\u2014into separate structures connected by stepping stones trimmed with wild grasses. Kundig, in his unpretentious way, calls them \u201chuts.\u201d There\u2019s a hut for primary living, with a modular kitchen, vast dining table, turntable-mounted entertainment island with built-in speakers, and capacious floating hearth; a hut for the primary bedroom; and two villa-like huts for the kids, which are intended to accommodate future grandchildren. The architecture allows the home\u2019s inhabitants to interact with nature.<\/p>\n
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Open Gallery![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.elledecor.com\/_assets\/design-tokens\/fre\/static\/icons\/arrow-right.7440adc.svg\" "\\"Black"){kind=icon}
<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re going to make a place in a beautiful landscape, you want to engage it,\u201d Kundig says. \u201cThat\u2019s the way you experience the place, rather than sealing yourself inside an air-conditioned box.\u201d If the Valle heat is too much, there\u2019s a shady olive orchard to hide in, not to mention a pool constructed from a Texas-style cattle tank that nestles alongside the main hut, bordered by lavender.<\/p>\n
The structures, which total 2,900 square feet, are built in no-nonsense concrete cinder block. \u201cIt\u2019s the perfect material for that landscape,\u201d Kundig says. \u201cTough as nails and made from the earth.\u201d The pale gray cast lends the huts a hushed aura: solid yet spectral. The interiors feature simple, Kundigesque plywood, which provides a soft feeling of comfort and refuge. \u201cIt\u2019s about using common materials in uncommon ways,\u201d he says, \u201cto make a place feel special.\u201d<\/p>\n