Research Jim Olson's Art in Architecture

Architect Jim Olson has long researched and enhanced the diverse connections between home and nature through art and an artful approach to architecture. His strategy has made him among the Pacific Northwest’s most significant architects, well worth a career retrospective and companion publication. The exhibition Jim Olson: Art in Architecture runs through June 9, 2013, in the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington. It is billed as “the first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the career of Jim Olson, creator of Olson Kundig Architects and founder of [Whatcom’s] Lightcatcher construction” (Astute ers may recognize another half of Olson’s company; a publication on Tom Kundig’s home structure is the focus of some other ideabook.)

Accompanying the exhibition is a publication which is less a monograph of his significant jobs and an encapsulation of the thoughts and influences spanning the first 50 decades of his career. This ideabook delves into the publication, and therefore into the words and images of Jim Olson.

Olson Kundig Architects

The pay and subtitle of the book are very telling. Pictured, appropriately, is your Lightcatcher, especially the wall which defines a part of the building’s courtyard. Olson strove to make the building active on the exterior as far as on the interior, which is clearest here, where the translucent glass captures mild — be it sun or the artificial light from in the museum — and displays it to the city.

As Olson describes it from the novel, “This layered wall of translucent glass is a lantern at night — a beacon to the neighborhood. As a public gathering area, it cradles members of the community in a soft, glowing light”

Olson Kundig Architects

The book’s subtitle, “Art in Architecture,” is carefully worded for in a commonality in Olson’s jobs: They are containers for artwork, be they residential or institutional. In reality, nearly all of the jobs from the publication are homes, and in some of those cases Olson worked together with artists to craft special areas and means of screen for artworks.

Olson Kundig Architects

The book is divided into three sections — “Environment,” “Art & Collecting” and “Creating Experience” — accompanied by an article by writer Ted Loos along with a chronology of Olson’s life and endeavors. The 3 main sections move from private history and influences (envisioned is Lake Sawyer, Washington, one such influence) to images of endeavors where architecture and art fuse.

Running all through are the words of Olson which explain the images yet also give a peek into the way he thinks about distance, expertise, understanding, the environment and other matters.

Olson Kundig Architects

Even something as seemingly simple as a painting on a wall (one by Walt Kuhn is on the ideal page displayed here) is described in terms of how it functions together with the architecture: “Color, material, scale and makeup weave this painting to the room.”

Olson Kundig Architects

The photo of Olson drawing the frontispiece hints in the sketches which are located throughout the book. The majority of them are project specific, like perspectives and floor plans, but looser drawings are also located, such as these sketches of Mount Rainier.

Olson Kundig Architects

Olson’s sketches are definitely part of a bigger process of figuring out things, articulating thoughts through pencil marks on paper. He’s not scared of being a little messy, since this sketch atop a hardline drawing plenty of correction fluid attests.

Olson Kundig Architects

The project which makes up most of the “Art & Collecting” segment is what the company calls “An American Place.” The home is constructed around, in the organization’s words, “among the nation’s best collections of 20th century American art.”

Among Gaston Lachaise’s sculptures (found on the left page shown here) is but one part of artwork in the home, which also comprises the Kuhn painting observed previously. The sculpture is perfectly located in front of an opening with full-height glazing, which accentuates its own outline and makes it viewed from the exterior. Olson describes it in the publication as such: “Each artwork is given its own area so that it can be appreciated without diversion. The architecture acts as a frame”

Olson Kundig Architects

Finally Olson’s perspectives on architecture and art encircle the environment, such that the three are constantly interacting. That is quite pronounced with outside artwork, as seen from both faces facing each other in the end of the walkway. Olson says in the publication, “The arrangement of the structure helps to guide our eyes toward the functions of art and focus our attention”

Olson Kundig Architects

In the “Creating Experience” section, the jobs are somewhat less directly concerning the interaction about architecture and art, and more about seeing architecture as something artful. Pictured is your Northwoods House in Michigan, which Olson says “expresses my desire to create architecture that arouses pleasure in precisely the exact same way that a sculpture does.”

In an accompanying sketch, we hear Olson questioning if a home in snow country has to have a pitched roof, considering precedents in areas as far away as Finland had flat roofs.

Olson Kundig Architects

This last glimpse of the book is of the Cabo Residence in Baja, Mexico, where Olson can break down the distinction between indoors and out via a large sliding glass wall. Olson sees the introduction of the interiors to the exteriors (weather permitting) as heaven, a belief that is likely shared by many, for openings like this give us a direct link to nature from the security of home.

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