Dear Friends please join me over the coming +/- year on my web page, douglasgranum.com, Art and Architecture segment, to follow two young architects, Nevis Charles Granum and Kristian Sundberg, as they, along with their creative consultant, Douglas Charles Granum, design, discover and ultimately guide the creation, ground up, of the iconic Wilson home.

Pine Knoll Studios will be designing and creating a unique single-family home facing great swaths of western sky and Puget Sound while overlooking Titlow Park, in Tacoma, Washington.

During this year +/-, you will see multiple project progress photographs, read about the creative process, as well as watch this thrilling process actually occur. This is a rare, one of a kind, opportunity. This will be the first home for this young new innovative architectural group.

You will have the pleasure of watching the development from inception to finish.

A few words about our group:

We are all traveled in this world. We have all studied buildings, culture, cooking, music, horticulture, art of all kinds.

Each of us has seen and knows what success can and must look like.

We have roamed the Louver in Paris, the Forbidden city in Beijing, the continent of Antarctica, the magic and architecture of Machu Picchu, Rome and the Great Wall of China. We have explored Ancient Alaskan villages, with their great adzed cedar beams, visited painted and carved village houses in New Guinea, grass covered white cottages in Denmark.

All of these experiences and more can and will comprise parts of our continuing unique decision-making process.

Nevis Charles Granum’s grandparents were both architects and graduates from Nevis’ Alma mater, University of Washington, Seattle Washington. His grandmother, Mary, was one of the first women architects to graduate from the University of Washington. Kristian Sundberg, also a University of Washington architectural graduate, is a young and talented creator as well as owning a brewery in his home state of New Jersey. Douglas Charles Granum has traveled the world, created in multiple materials, such as large stone, a variety metals, cast and fabricated, bronze, steel, wood, glass, designed and built single family homes, healing gardens and operatic stage sets.

As time goes by we will feature individual art works from each of our team. 

This tour from “Laying the foundation” to house warming will provide interest to students of architecture, others of you who are simply interested in design, building process as well as those simply wishing to understand the challenges of creation.

Architecture demands a keen awareness of the client’s personality. Each personal experience beyond school out in the greater world has enormous value, i.e. Douglas Granum learned blacksmithing from his grandfather, construction from his father, gardening from his mother. Nevis Granum learned stone carving and construction from his father and many of his father’s workmen. All of these aspects are vital. 

So then how do we start, do we start the design from the inside out or outside in? Is it about the architect or about the client? Obviously in our case it is all about the client.

What are the client’s passions? Are they collectors, i.e. do they need walls to hold 2- dimensional art? Does that art need to be protected from the sun’s UV, i.e. fenestration? Will the client need special lighting and spaces for sculpture?

Do they want to have an actual wood burning fire place or is a gas fireplace the answer? Do they have special wheel chair or other personal physical requirements? Below are just a few of the many questions we will ask at this early stage in the process, their will be many, many more. There are no wrong questions.