UUCS member Moritz Kundig, a prolific Spokane architect, humanist, and avid lover of mountains in his native Switzerland and America, died Feb. 10 after a short stay in hospice. He was 98.

Kundig was renowned for his distinctive midcentury modern buildings, which included the Spokane Civic Theater, two UU Church buildings, a chapel at Washington state’s McNeill Island prison, and dozens of private residences.

He was born September 8, 1925 in Winterthur, Switzerland, near Zurich. His father was an elementary school teacher and his mother was a pianist and homemaker. He grew up hiking and skiing in the scenic Alps, nurturing a lifelong love of nature. He met his future wife, Dorli Obrist, at an athletic club as a young man.

He earned his architecture degree in 1951 from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he was inspired by lectures from eminent architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright. According to a memoir he wrote in 2005, architecture seemed an ideal blend of his rational and artistic talents.

At 26, he left Switzerland on the passenger ship Queen Mary for Salt Lake City after a distant uncle urged him to try life in America and sponsored him for a visa. After landing an architecture job, he asked Dorli (her name was later Americanized to Dora) to join him. They were married in a Unitarian Universalist church, a liberal outlier in Mormon Utah, in 1952.

He and his soon-to-be wife chose the church after driving around Salt Lake City looking for a suitable venue, he wrote in his memoir. “One day we drove by a nice New England style church which had a sign, ‘Closed for the Summer.’ We thought that this might be a different kind of church, and we were interested,” Kundig wrote.

He remained a Unitarian and a humanist for the rest of his life. After moving to Spokane in 1955, he and Dora joined the UU congregation. He later designed a South Hill chapel and the large new church where we worship today. He made many lifelong friends through the church, including prominent artist Harold Balazs, with whom he collaborated on various projects, including doorway art at Kundig’s South Hill home (an abstract portrayal of Moritz and Dora greeting visitors) and the large entry doors at the UU Church. Balazs died in 2018.

He and Dora had three children: Tom Kundig, an internationally famous architect; Henry Kundig, a Montana businessman; and Sylvia Kundig, a former Federal Trade Commission lawyer in San Francisco. He taught his children to ski around age 5 and took them on hiking and skiing trips in the mountain West, Canada, and Switzerland. The couple chose Spokane in part because of its proximity to mountain landscapes, according to Kundig’s memoir.

As Kundig rose to prominence in Spokane, he made his mark by creating midcentury modern buildings with special sensitivity to setting and local materials. He received several awards from the American Institute of Architects and received its highest honor, AIA Fellow, in 1984.

He started his own firm in Spokane, which later merged with architects Ron Tan and Dale Brookie’s firm into Tan Brookie Kundig (TBK) Architects. That firm was chosen to design some of the Expo ’74 buildings, including the Iranian Pavilion. TBK later merged with another firm into Northwest Architectural Company (NAC), which has expanded beyond Spokane to Seattle and Los Angeles.

Later in his career, Kundig worried about the demolition of many historic buildings in Spokane and helped to establish the Historic Preservation Office at City Hall in the former Montgomery Ward Building, which his firm helped remodel and which remains the seat of city government today.
In 2017, he was inducted into the Spokane Citizen Hall of Fame, sponsored by the Spokane Public Library Foundation and the city, recognizing people who have made significant contributions to Spokane.

After a 58-year marriage, Kundig’s beloved wife, Dora, died in 2010. Besides his three children, he is survived by four grandchildren and seven great grandchildren. His sister Magdalena Kuhn and his brother Ulrich Kundig live in Switzerland; his older brother, Peter Kundig, predeceased him.
Plans for a memorial service at our church will be announced later. The family suggests donations in his memory can be made to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Spokane and Spokane Preservation Advocates.

Karen Dorn Steele, with excerpts from Moritz’ 2005 memoir, “Oh, I Remember It Well.”