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"View Slideshow\n\nTerry Hunziker was raised in a small lumber town on the Columbia River in the state of Washington, went to school in Washington and since college has lived in Seattle, where his practice is centered. Though he has projects in California and New York, he is, in the best sense of the term, a regional person.\n\nSpeaking of the Pacific Northwest, Hunziker says, &amp;quot;I really love the colors you find in nature up here. There&amp;#39;s a certain kind of layering that happens in the atmosphere that you don&amp;#39;t get in other places, a subtlety of color.&amp;quot; He adds, &amp;quot;The Northwest has a very strong tradition of Asian-influenced architecture, Japanese design in particular. What you see in my work is something that&amp;#39;s in the air here, and it&amp;#39;s influenced a lot of architects.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;What you see in my work is something that&amp;#39;s in the air here in the Northwest.&amp;quot;\n\nBeing very strong in one place can have its drawbacks. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s tricky in Seattle,&amp;quot; he explains, &amp;quot;because most of my clients know each other very well. I tend to work on a lot of projects with art collectors, and those in the art-collecting community all know each other. So it&amp;#39;s difficult to do work where there are no overlaps, to try to keep it individual.&amp;quot; He continues, &amp;quot;Maybe the reason I get a lot of work from art collectors is that they know I understand art. I just finished a couple of houses that have amazing collections.&amp;quot;\n\nHunziker did not grow up in a world of art and aesthetics, though his hometown of Longview, named after a lumber magnate and founded in 1922, began as a planned town. The design of some of its first buildings impressed him early on. &amp;quot;Even before I knew what Art D\u00E9co was, I remember as a kid loving the post office.&amp;quot; But mostly, he says, &amp;quot;Longview is a small, blue-collar town, and, like a lot of small, semirural towns, it wasn&amp;#39;t a terribly sophisticated place.&amp;quot;\n\nHis father invented and constructed things like marine testing equipment and chain saw\u00A5blade sharpeners, none of which set the boy&amp;#39;s mind afire. &amp;quot;I actually hated going to my dad&amp;#39;s manufacturing business,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Though I had to go there every Saturday to earn my allowance. I cleaned his place every weekend.&amp;quot;\n\nNor were his early school years very exciting. &amp;quot;The subject that interested me in school was English lit, and that&amp;#39;s about it,&amp;quot; he recalls. &amp;quot;I mean, I hated it. I was always more interested in the art thing, in drawing, than I was in anything else.&amp;quot;\n\nIn college at Washington State, Hunziker began to make some serious career decisions. &amp;quot;I was figuring out what I was going to do, and I realized I wasn&amp;#39;t a very good artist. I could see I probably wouldn&amp;#39;t make any kind of living doing that.&amp;quot; He found schoolwork &amp;quot;excruciatingly boring&amp;quot; and was less than caught up in academic life, even after he transferred to the University of Washington in Seattle.\n\n&amp;quot;I really craved the hands-on experience,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;That&amp;#39;s the only way I ever learn anything. That&amp;#39;s my personality. I&amp;#39;m a very intuitive designer\u2014not the kind of person who learns much from study. I wanted to be there and see the fabrics firsthand and not see pictures of things.&amp;quot;\n\n&amp;quot;I craved the hands-on experience. That&amp;#39;s the only way I ever learn anything. That&amp;#39;s my personality. I&amp;#39;m a very intuitive designer.&amp;quot;\n\nMuch of Hunziker&amp;#39;s hands-on learning came through apprenticeship. &amp;quot;My education was with Jean Jongeward, more than any college or university experience.&amp;quot; Jongeward, whom he describes as a &amp;quot;radical, volatile woman who had this incredible eye,&amp;quot; was an interior designer whom he met around 1971 while he was working in a Seattle art gallery. &amp;quot;I was basically a maintenance kid. I would do anything\u2014I would clean, serve hors d&amp;#39;oeuvres at the art openings. The gallery represented a lot of really important Northwest artists, and when there was an art opening in those days, it was a big deal. That&amp;#39;s where I met Jean.&amp;quot;\n\nHunziker was to stay with her for 13 years. &amp;quot;Jean had a fabulous sense of humor,&amp;quot; he remembers. &amp;quot;She was really smart; her vocabulary was astonishing, and she was really interesting to talk to. She was also extremely emotional. She could be pretty insecure sometimes, and that would make things difficult. When I first started working for her, I was sort of terrified,&amp;quot; he adds with a laugh.\n\nFinally, he says, &amp;quot;I realized I was unhappy and that there had to be more.&amp;quot; It was not an easy leave-taking: &amp;quot;When I went out on my own, she didn&amp;#39;t speak to me for about 14 years. On my last day at work she wouldn&amp;#39;t say goodbye. She just went upstairs. It was tough.\n\n&amp;quot;The day I gave notice, I left Jean&amp;#39;s office and I drove to my local bank. I knew the manager there, and I went straight to her desk and said, Pat, I just quit. If I have trouble, can I get a loan from you?&amp;#39; I was nervous about not having any business and not being able to support myself. At the time a couple in Seattle had decided to leave their house and had bought a floor of a building in Seattle that was just going up. They heard about me, liked my presentation and hired me. I was now involved in a major project, a 5,000-square-foot apartment. I was really lucky to start my career that way.&amp;quot;\n\nAnd what happened with Jean Jongeward? &amp;quot;Many, many years later the Bellevue Art Museum held a retrospective of her work. I was planning on going even though we hadn&amp;#39;t spoken for all those years, when I got a message from Jean asking me to please come to the opening. And so we were reunited. I was very happy that we were able to become friends again before she died.&amp;quot;\n\nAs for his work, Terry Hunziker observes, &amp;quot;What we do isn&amp;#39;t always fun and great.&amp;quot; In designing for serious art collectors he has encountered architects who want to design a particular space for a particular painting. &amp;quot;I refuse to do that,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#39;s all about context and relationships. I have to be in the space and see everything and go from there. There&amp;#39;s an interesting tension because you don&amp;#39;t know where everything is going. It&amp;#39;s much more exciting.&amp;quot;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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