We're pleased to announce that Tom Kundig, who we profiled here several months ago, is the winner of the 2008 Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Architecture. Facing off with formidable future-forward talents of Weiss/Manfredi and the industrial chic of Lo-Tek, Kundig's graceful mechanics set in nature won out. As Mark Robbins, Dean of the Syracuse University School of Architecture and jury member noted, "All the jurors responded to the very direct poetry of the work that comes from the juxtaposition of late 19th-century industrial forms against the landscape. He [Kundig] has a great sensitivity to landscape—"

Elsewhere Kundig has been praised for his exploration and reinvention of parts of architecture that are overlooked or “forgotten,” such as doors, windows or stairs, as well as for his use of kinetic architectural elements.