ORAL HISTORY OF JOHN LUND KRIKEN Interviewed by Suzanne ...

Kriken: I’ve always felt I’ve owed a debt to Mrs. Humphreys my 6 th grade elementary
school teacher because she hit my button, and I made an automatic
turnaround.
Riess: Were you very visually involved with where you were living?
Kriken: I guess I--yes, I think of myself as a very visually-oriented person. And we
lived in the East Bay Hills, both Richmond and El Cerrito, looking back across
to the west which is exactly the direction that my father’s valley in Norway
was oriented, looking west. And for him there was always the setting sun, and
these great craggy, fjord-like cliffs coming down to the ocean; and then this
little piece of openness and sky. He told me about it, and said it represented a
place he had to explore. And every place we’ve ever lived has this western
orientation, including a little country place that we built in northern California.
Riess: That’s in Clear Lake?
Kriken: Yeah. Yeah.
Riess: And that’s the place that he allowed you to design?
Kriken: He said “You want to be an architect; you design it.” So I designed it. We built
the house over two summers. It’s on the lake where we keep our collection of
boats. My brother, his wife Rita, and their boys Ryan and Luke live on the lake
a short distance away. So the lake, for us, has always been about family
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