Tom Kundig's six modernist huts in Washington's Methow Valley, on steel wheels.
The story behind these huts is a small clinic in working with constraints. The clients' land was zoned for an RV park, not residential structures. Most architects would have walked away from the commission or fought the zoning. Kundig put the huts on steel wheels — making them, technically, recreational vehicles — and built them anyway. The result is six 200-square-foot cabins that look like architecture, function like architecture, but legally are not. Every site has a constraint that frustrates a lesser builder. The discipline is finding the move that turns the constraint into the design.