The 2020 Creative Residents

Mike and Laura Bartunek
Creative Residents — June 2020

Michael Bartunek – Architect, Illustrator, Painter

Mike Bartunek grew up in a small town in rural Nebraska. He moved to the Northwest in 1981 and has been a resident on Bainbridge Island for 36 years. Mike’s architectural career started in 1973 with DLR Group in Omaha Nebraska and in 1981 he transferred to a new office in Seattle. In 2018, he retired as a principal and lead designer. Mike’s latest projects include the Boeing Everett Delivery center; Boeing Seattle Delivery Center; United Launch Alliance Office Campus, Denver Colorado; Boeing Completion Center, Zhoushan China; Pinnacle Bank Arena, Lincoln Nebraska; Nebraska State Capital Campus Master Plan, Lincoln Nebraska. Because of his joy of drawing and ability to communicate design concepts through sketches, he soon became the firm’s architectural illustrator and upon retirement his renderings numbered more than 1,500. Now, still communicating ideas, the direction of his work is moving away from illustrating to fine art.

Laura Bartunek – Architect

Laura Bartunek grew up on Bainbridge Island.  She began her architectural education at the University of Washington and relocated to the East Coast to receive her Master of Architecture from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard. Laura returned to the Pacific Northwest in 2011 and joined the architecture firm Olson Kundig as an intern. In 2016 Laura was named an associate of the firm. At Olson Kundig Laura is known for her interest in imaginative and exploratory architecture, which has informed her work on such cultural projects as the Secret Garden, a rooftop garden located above a nine-story department store in South Korea, and the CheckMate Winery Pop-Up, a temporary kinetic tasting room nestled in the landscape of the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. These project also reflects Laura’s continued interest in landscape – both real and imagined, micro and macro — as a point of departure for design investigations. Her recent proposal “Because It Rains” was awarded the AIA Seattle Emerging Professionals Travel Scholarship and explored the concept of rain as a creative catalyst in design.

Laura and Mike Bartunek will be in residence at Bloedel Reserve during June 2020.