New Terrain: Olson Kundig's Kirsten Murray on Exploring and Developing Deeply
Portrait by Kevin Scott.
By Julia Gamolina
Olson Kundig Principal and Owner Kirsten Murray creates spaces that strengthen and enrich communities. An instrumental figure in the firm’s design culture, her portfolio spans private residences, mixed-used buildings, art spaces, historic commercial renovations and urban design. Kirsten’s work has been recognized by local, regional and national AIA Honor Awards and AIA Housing Awards, and has appeared in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Interior Design and Architectural Record, among others. In her interview, Kirsten talks about developing her expertise, following her curiosities, and establishing firm culture, advising young architects to find a way to enjoy what they do.
JG: How did your interest in architecture first develop?
KM: I was a bit of an accidental architect. Since childhood, I’ve always been very aware of and interested in my environment – both in nature and built form – and would seek out spots where my imagination could roam. I grew up in the Midwest and western United States, in places where the relationship between built and natural environments was a key inspiration to me. I also liked to draw and I read a lot of science fiction and history, which got me thinking about utopian and dystopian futures and fantastic places.
The first time I really connected with architecture as a potential course of study and career path was through Paolo Soleri’s arcologies, which imagine fantastic mega-structures that essentially function as cities. I was drawn to that utopian fringe, the intersection between fiction and futurism.
What did you learn about yourself in studying it?
In school, I was curious about many different areas of study but not especially drawn to any specific focus. Like many people who go into architecture and design, I appreciated the breadth of thinking that architecture encourages, as opposed to a deep focus and mastery of one area. I found it very grounding, a way to apply abstract principles to something with a real form, hands on and tangible.
False Bay Residence, San Juan Islands, WA. Photography by Benjamin Benschneider.
This single-family home is situated to maximize sweeping views of Haro Strait and the Olympic Mountains, with 20-foot-tall exterior sliding wood shutters that extend across the entire west façade to modulate light and solar heat gain.
100 Stewart Hotel & Apartments, Seattle, WA. Photography by Nic Lehoux.
Located in the heart of downtown Seattle, 100 Stewart Hotel & Apartments (Thompson Seattle) serves as a contemporary landmark that visually and physically responds to the surrounding urban context. The building is composed of two primary elements that break the expression of the structure: a focal point “glass lantern” with geometric shifts that physically mimic the shifting street grid alignment; and the adjoining frame of solid façades that provides a visual counterpoint.
How did you get your start in the field?
I graduated in the late 1980s during a pretty significant recession, and job hunting was a frustrating process. At the time there was a gulf between academics and practice – you didn’t necessarily have office-ready skills when you left school and firms didn’t quite know what to do with you. It took a few months of searching and moving progressively west until I ended up in Seattle and found a couple of interesting, short-term opportunities.
The first was with a sole practitioner, Wendell Lovett, who was a well-known mid-century architect in town with a reputation for being an educator and an independent thinker. He was also a great communicator and storyteller. I worked for him briefly and learned a lot, just by observing someone who was practicing architecture and also very engaged in the thought and theory side – and willing to share with a young designer. From there I went to work at NBBJ, which was a much larger firm, very organized and focused on specific project typologies. Between those two offices, I probably worked at the smallest and largest firms in town at the time.
How did you finally get to Olson Kundig?
I interviewed at Olson Kundig – it was Olson Sundberg then – within about a year of graduating. The first projects I worked on were representative of the kinds of projects the firm was doing then. One was a highly crafted art home designed by Jim Olson, where I worked on super detailed glass installations and custom fabrication – the kind of project you dream about as an architecture student. The other project was a small subset of a large public building, the permanent galleries at the Seattle Art Museum. It was an immediate immersion into all the technical and managerial and legal complexities of architecture, at two very different scales. I doubt I could have picked two other experiences that were as different or as important to my development as those projects.
“Architecture tends to pull us into the details, so it can be hard to remember to step back and track the big picture, too...Often it takes an outside force – a pandemic, a recession – to interrupt the inertia of our daily routine and create a pause, but it’s vital for positive change.”
How has your work evolved during your time there?
There have been several “chapters”. When I first joined in 1989, I started with high craft residential and art-focused projects, including the Seattle Art Museum galleries and Jim Olson’s City House. I continued to work on residential, urban and cultural projects with the firm’s partners through the 1990s and early 2000s. Then I joined the ownership group in 2008, and around that time, I started to work more on community-based and larger-scale projects. From there, I continued to work on urban projects around Seattle, and also started working with larger user groups on both institutional and workplace projects.
It’s always a puzzle to create functional, usable spaces that also reflect the culture of the school or organization and I enjoy the challenge of that. I also led the renovation of our offices in 2018, which introduced new areas for flexible collaboration and made our in-house maker space much more explicitly visible – elements that are core to our culture and our approach to design.
Where are you in your career today?
It’s an interesting question – how do any of us know where we are in life? Tomorrow the phone could ring and change what I’m doing forever. Right now, I’m 30 years into my career and I hope I have another 20 years ahead. It takes a long time to become an architect, and at this point in my career, I feel like I have the experience and the point of view, as well as the support infrastructure and personal freedom that comes with maturity, to be able to start doing the most important work of my life. I tend to follow my fancy or my curiosity, so my career has been somewhat exploratory. I’m always intrigued by projects that provide an opportunity to learn something new or uncover new terrain.
Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, Seattle, WA. Photography by Benjamin Benschneider.
Kinetic gallery walls designed by Olson Kundig enable the flexible reconfiguration of this 7,800-square-foot presentation space, allowing the artists and communities that use it to project their own identities in the space. Suspended from a custom-designed elevated track inspired by the railroad tracks that serve the historic train station below, a set of eight movable walls with integrated lighting support a wide range of displays and spatial configurations.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges?
One central challenge is the nature of the work – architecture tends to pull us into the details, so it can be hard to remember to step back and track the big picture, too. I’ve seen a lot of people recently, in architecture and across industries, taking a step back to clarify their goals and assess their actions, and I think that’s a very healthy process. Often it takes an outside force – a pandemic, a recession – to interrupt the inertia of our daily routine and create a pause, but it’s vital for positive change. If you want to make your work more equitable, more sustainable, more value-driven, you have to take that time to look closely and identify opportunities for improvement.
Architecture can also be so broad and so immersive, it’s easy to lose confidence. The pace of progress can be really frustrating, it can feel like nothing is happening or you’re pushing against walls that refuse to move. This career requires a lot of persistence. We know that women in particular leave the industry when they find themselves in a perfect storm of conflict – if they’re pulled in different directions because of a family concern or a health issue, or they find an opportunity that provides a better economic return for their time investment. Those are real, valid issues that many of us experience. At the time I interviewed and entered the practice, I was 24 years old. I was also six months pregnant with my first child, so the challenge of balancing work and family has been my norm almost from day one.
The challenge is to be able to get through those times and still strategically pursue your goals. Sometimes you have a phase in your career where you’re just surviving. You’re not progressing or achieving anything new, you’re just keeping your head above water. And then something happens – the skies clear, the project ends, the outside pressures are relieved – and you can refocus. Sometimes these periods when you can’t feel yourself progressing end up being the times when you’re learning the most.
I made a pretty strategic decision over and over again to stay the course with this team and this firm. As curious as I might have been about trying a new direction, I felt like I’d made an investment in the development of my skills and wanted to stick around to capitalize on the results. My approach is more “bloom where you’re planted,” and I’ve been lucky to be able to work in such a fruitful context and develop deeply.
“As a working mom, I hope I’ve helped make the case that awareness of everyone’s life cycles, whether young and single, mid-career and parenting, or navigating family issues around health and aging, is part of the work of building a strong firm-wide community.”
What have been the highlights?
I remember the day that the Seattle Art Museum opened. It was one of the first big public projects I worked on, and to see the city sort of flood into this new space was a great experience. I feel like I’d been a part of something that was really important. I often have that feeling when I finish a project, that sense of celebration. Architecture is an act of great optimism: we’re building something for people to live in or work in or learn in. There are a lot of jobs that don’t have that same sense of completion. Seeing people engage with the project and use it – that never gets old. I never take that moment for granted.
There have been big achievements and highlights at a firm level, too. Being able to impact the cultural aspect of the practice has been really rewarding. I helped establish our International Internship Program, which has provided over 500 young professionals from 30 countries with hands-on experience and in-depth exposure to all aspects of architectural practice. I also co-directed [storefront] Olson Kundig, an experimental art space that hosted community collaborations, R&D initiatives and exhibit design installations. [storefront] also created a vehicle for staff development, community engagement and education—a program where our staff could draw upon and sharpen their skills in design and project management while building relationships within our neighborhood.
As a working mom, I hope I’ve helped make the case that awareness of everyone’s life cycles, whether young and single, mid-career and parenting, or navigating family issues around health and aging, is part of the work of building a strong firm-wide community. I’ve seen that part of our culture grow consistently over the years.
Who are you admiring right now and why?
First and foremost, I admire and am continually inspired by my colleagues at Olson Kundig. The community of a design studio has always been a draw for me, since I was a student. That culture is one of the big reasons I’ve stayed with the firm. It’s multi-generational so there is always someone to learn from and someone to teach, a plurality of voices and points of view.
Right now, I’m admiring people who are reflecting on power and influence and trying to develop a better collective awareness around the cause and effect of power and resources and decision making. I’m also really admiring people who are baking research into their practice, especially social research.
As a younger architect, I was involved with various external initiatives through design juries and project collaborations and was exposed to more senior designers that I continue to admire, including Annie Chu, Marlene Imirzian, Hsinming Fung and Martha Schwartz.
Finally, in the last couple of years, I’ve noticed increased interest in the perspectives of female architects, so I’ve had more opportunities to participate in juries and panel discussions with other female designers that I was aware of but hadn’t met, like a recent jury and panel with Christiana Moss and Taal Safdie. That’s been an inspiring process and I look forward to continuing to develop those relationships. Each of those women lead our field in a range of different ways and bring such passion to the practice of design, and it’s exciting to be a part of that dialogue.
Paradise Road Housing at Smith College, Northampton, MA. Photography by Trent Bell.
The Paradise Road Housing Complex contains five, two-story buildings, each with four 1,400-square-foot apartment units arranged around a central courtyard. The units respond to the site and celebrate the local New England architectural tradition, while offering modern living spaces for students making the transition from dorm life to self-sufficiency.
Media Headquarters, New York City, NY. Photography by Kevin Scott.
Housed within a historic 120-year-old Union Square Building, this two-story 57,000-square-foot media headquarters in New York City features a central stair that complements adjacent flexible areas for writers, designers, and sales and technology workers to meet in groups or work independently and provides a venue for evening parties, films, lectures and cultural convening.
What is the impact you’d like to have in the world?
I would like to feel like the products of my work have contributed to our collective advancement. I don’t necessarily expect to have changed the world, but hopefully I’ve had my hands on the rope alongside other people and we’ve all sort of pulled together toward progress.
I like to think of the buildings I’ve made as useful, good buildings. That’s the core mission: creating places that really serve, that help users live better or do their jobs more effectively or engage more fully with each other. I want to participate in making really great places that people enjoy.
I equally value the practice of helping people develop themselves within the profession – through the work I do with our internship program or other mentorship initiatives, or leading and facilitating conversations across the industry.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
You have to find a way to enjoy what you do every day, to find meaning in your everyday tasks and get satisfaction from that. Whether that’s working on projects you enjoy or collaborating with people you like or clients whose vision and values intrigue you and push you to new levels. Align yourself as best you can with people who are doing things you admire, because that leads to growth and will ultimately carry you through your practice. If something is feeling forced or you’re having trouble connecting with your work or your teammates – keep working on that. If you see things you wish were different in your workplace culture, consider what you could do to change them. Since my earliest days at the firm, I can’t recall an initiative or practice aimed at improvement going without support. You know when you’ve found – or created – your best environment. The rest follows.
Women in particular should be aware of the special challenges they may face, especially considering that women are still emerging in the field. I encourage women to build experience, to seek confidence, and to make sure they have a sense of their own value. There’s research and anecdotal evidence to suggest that women have a higher tendency to feel like they’re imposters or not as qualified as their male colleagues – that’s a conditioned mindset and something we have to be really aware of, because it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy in your career. Do what you can to find – or create – supportive and collaborative environments where your work and your value is recognized, and then take risks to develop your skills. Make mistakes and let the outcome of those mistakes give you a sense of purpose. Don’t let fear or lack of confidence keep you from stretching and trying new things.