The four-story Saltzer Health medical office building in Meridian, Idaho provides an array of specialty clinics, five-room outpatient surgery center, physical therapy, gastroenterology, endoscopy, urgent care, family medicine, and five-modality medical imaging center in an easily accessible, welcoming medical campus. The overall Saltzer Health design aesthetic was developed to support a different way of delivering health care services. From the ease of access and all-in-one campus to the efficient space layout and refreshing interior design, the ethos of care is wholly patient centered. The Saltzer Health campus will help fill the need for high-quality, state-of-the-art health care in the fast-growing areas of Meridian and Nampa, while their new urgent care clinics have opened in locations across the Treasure Valley.
“When I first visited this site, the owner and I immediately had the idea for a building that seems to be emerging out of the landscape. The house takes advantage of all the site has to offer: sweeping landscape views, balanced with a sense of being underneath and within. I’m always trying to find the yin and the yang of a place.” –Tom Kundig, FAIA, RIBA, Design Principal
This 6,500-square-foot home, which sits on a quiet cul-de-sac in Ketchum, Idaho between Bald Mountain and Dollar Mountain, was designed around the client’s collection of contemporary art alongside commanding mountain views. Windows carefully frame views of exterior artworks against the forested landscape beyond.
“This project is truly an art house. Art is very much a part of the family’s lifestyle, so the home was designed to work at different scales depending on their constantly rotating collection of artworks.” –Tom Kundig, FAIA, RIBA, Design Principal
Set in the remote, harsh high desert of Idaho, Outpost is an artist’s live/work studio and sculpture garden. The building’s compactness restricts site impact and reinforces the desire to be outside. This is a windy place, and the enclosed “paradise garden,” is separated from the wild landscape by thick masonry walls. The footprint of the house is the limit of intrusion into the land—a simple, clearly defined space. This structure exemplifies Kundig’s belief that the architect’s job is to create an experience of place.
The owners of Chicken Point Cabin and their two young children bought the waterfront property—located half an hour from their house in northern Idaho—in order to build a lakeside cabin. Their intent was to be able to use the house year-round, but especially during the summer, when the local weather can get oppressively hot. Their only directive to Tom was simple: make the house as open to the water as possible. Tom’s response to this challenge was as direct as the request: a large pivoting picture window on the waterside that literally opens up to the landscape. “Little house, big window,” in Tom’s words.
Initial site visits at the University of Idaho Pitkin Nursery revealed hoop houses, metal sheds and stacks of planter boxes. Beginning with the idea of a wood box floating on the undulating sea of the Palouse, the design team set out to stitch together the program, landscape and the materiality of Idaho forest products. The college wanted to extend their public outreach in addition to nursery research functions. The outstretched ramps and decks reach out to the landscape and invite the public and students to the building. The Sales Office was pulled through the wood screen as a way to express itself beyond the functions of classroom, offices, and social gathering. The weathering cedar wood screen that stands off the building was imagined as a modern western storefront. The repetition of stacked boxes was intriguing; we saw that as the piece that expressed the transition from working nursery to classroom. The cedar wood screen is the threshold element for faculty and students to step through the gap between the two elements; wood screen and black box.
This project looks at what makes Boise unique and builds upon those elements to create a cultural district that promotes Boise as a place. The Boise 8th Street Cultural District design embraces sustainability as a form generator. Green roofs, downtown agriculture, solar access, and responsible water use combined to form the project. The district’s highest priority is to be of and for Boise, because there is nothing more sustainable than a beautiful, lively, city where people will want to walk, bike, create, and live.
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