Early this month at Design Miami/, Olson Kundig Architects celebrated the opening of “38 Beams,” a temporary collectors lounge named after the thirty-eight salvaged glulam beams that made up the structure. Originally milled in the 1950s, the Northwestern Douglas fir beams were once used to construct a Los Angeles building before being repurposed.

Approximately 15x30 inches around and up to 30 feet in length, 38 Beams formed a 2,400-square-foot lounge with an open lattice-work stacked 15-feet-high. The focal point of the space was a 28-foot Perrier-Jouët champagne bar lit by a chandelier of one hundred suspended light tubes designed by LILIENTHAL l ZAMORA. 

More about the structure and images, after the break. 

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Forty years ago, the Expo '74 World's Fair opened in Spokane, Washington to great fanfare as the world's first environmentally themed Expo. Perhaps equally as momentous, the former Soviet Union participated for the first time since World War II, and 5.6 million people attended throughout the course of the six month long Fair. This year, Olson Kundig Architects, led by design principal Tom Kundig, partnered with the City of Spokane to reinvent the original park with new concept designs for its structures, program, and facilities.

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In collaboration with client Shinsegae, Olson Kundig Architects has designed a 20,000 square foot roof garden in Uijeongbu, South Korea. Sitting atop the ninth floor of a twelve story department store, the park acts as a playground for children and a cultural center for the community. The project follows a rising trend: placing green spaces on top of buildings in urban areas to create safe and secluded public places. This particular garden uses entirely native species and incorporates sculptures by the artist Do-Ho Suh.

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Seattle’s Olson Kundig Architects has been tapped to design The Kirkland’s new headquarters in downtown Denver, just a block from Daniel Libeskind’s Denver Art Museum and Allied Works’ Clyfford Still Museum. The commission, which is expected to cost “tens of millions,” will double the museum’s gallery space and be used to display Colorado’s largest repository of art that includes a collection of 15,000 objects by Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Gehry, Andy Warhol, Eero Saarinen, Philip Johnson and Mies van der Rohe.

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Olson Kundig Architects’ $6.6 million Wagner Education Center at The Center for Wooden Boats (CWB) in Seattle is scheduled to break ground this winter. Reminiscent of historic Northwest boatbuilding facilities, the projected LEED Gold center will serve as the “modern front door for the growing museum, Lake Union Park and the surrounding South Lake Union neighborhood.” The design will feature large windows and movable exterior panels that, consistent with Kundig’s signature use of inventive details, will grant users maximum flexibility in controlling the interior’s exposure to the elements.

Construction begins in late October on the approximately 16,000 square foot new wing and building renovation of the Tacoma Art Museum. The new wing will provide a home for the Haub Family Collection of Western American Art, double the museum’s gallery space, provide greater art experiences for visitors, and increase the museum’s role in downtown Tacoma. Award-winning architects Olson Kundig Architects will design the expansion and renovation.