The educations of Mark McInturff: a quartet of influences drives a Washington, D.C., architect to abstraction - Interview - Biography

Residential Architect, March, 2003 by Meghan Drueding

Mark McInturff, FAIA, talks like a historicist. He dislikes most Western American cities because they don't have enough old buildings. He uses details from Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to help explain design concepts to clients. And he rhapsodizes about the past lives of the homes he remodels in and around Washington, D.C., a tradition-lover's paradise.

But his buildings tell a different story. Modern and minimalist, filled with light, color, and unexpected materials, they're elegantly composed sushi next to the heavy Thanksgiving dinner of a period home. He's gained a reputation as one of the premier Modernist architects in the Washington, D.C., area, with more than 180 local, state, and national design awards to his credit--almost all of them for residential projects. In 2002 McInturff Architects garnered another plum, a National AIA Honor Award for a sleek addition and remodel to a Chevy Chase, Md., house.

past forward

One might wonder how McInturff reconciles his respect for historic architecture with the Modern aesthetic he's honed during 28 years of practice. According to him, he doesn't have to--they're both part of the same mentality. "I don't draw a line between old architecture and new architecture," he says. "I think it's a continuum. But I think going backwards on that continuum is weird. The history of architecture is evolutionary. Why should we stop evolving now?"

McInturff has the confidence to see his six-person firm as part of that continuum. He's willing to take what history can give him, and then use those lessons to develop new ideas. In the course of a single conversation, he'll mention several disparate influences--say, Le Corbusier's color theories, Sir Norman Foster's studio space, and his former teacher Charles Moore's life philosophy. Since 1981 McInturff has taught at his alma mater, the University of Maryland, and other architecture schools, and he's never really stopped being a student himself. He chaperones a class trip to Europe every year, always to a city that contains a blend of historic and Modern buildings. In 2002, he chose London as the destination for the historic preservation class he's co-teaching at Catholic University. "London has the most interesting recent architecture in the world," he says. "It's got good new buildings that mix in well with the old." The globetrotting he's done and will do makes up such an indispensable part of McInturff's identity as an architect that he refers to it as the third of his four "educations."

field work

The first of these, he says, was his formal training at Maryland. (He knew in the eighth grade he wanted to be an architect; as a child, he and his family lived in a suburban Washington, D.C., house designed by local Modernist Charles Goodman.) While in college, he spent a summer building at Cosanti, Italian architect Paolo Soleri's experimental complex in Scottsdale, Ariz. And a semester under the tutelage of visiting professor Moore, which included a five-week tour of Europe and Northern Africa, cemented his craving for travel. "What I really learned from Charles Moore was the living nature of architecture, the fact that Places are meant to be used and experienced," he says. "Architecture was sensual for him."

Spurred by his time at Cosanti, McInturff worked as a carpenter for two years after graduating from Maryland--it was his "second education." Like most architects who have actually built houses, he can't imagine designing the way he does now without the practical knowledge he gained on construction sites. "Construction is really important to us," he says. "We design a lot of stuff as it's going up. I know it's hard on the builder, but I do think the act of building is an important part of the design process."

Combine that hands-on knowledge of construction with an architect's natural bent toward perfection, and you get a firm that labors over tiny details. Builders seem to appreciate it--the good ones, anyway. "I love to build 'em," says Paul Jeffs, a contractor who's built or remodeled about 35 McInturff houses. "It's more fun than doing the same thing over and over." Washington lawyer Lane Heard, whose Chevy Chase, Md., house McInturff remodeled in a series of small jobs, remembers a certain metal railing along the back of his house. "At the very end of the project, Mark thought the railing looked wrong," Heard says. "He paid to replace it because he wanted it to be right. That's the extraordinary level of commitment we got from him."

Working as a carpenter also may have given McInturff a taste for seeing his buildings in three dimensions almost as soon as they're down on paper. He employs a full-time modelmaker, an almost unheard of luxury for such a small studio. From start to finish, a more complicated residential project might generate seven or eight models: a couple of alternatives at the conceptual stage, more models as the design is refined, and even large-scale ones isolating a single room or detail.

life's work

McInturff considers his 17-year-old practice his ongoing "fourth education." Since he left a 10-year, post-carpentry partnership with Washington, D.C., architect John Wiebensen in 1985, he's run his firm out of a small compound just outside the city in Bethesda, Md. Three run-down cottages originally occupied the property, and he joined two of them to serve as a residence for himself and his family. The third structure, a few yards away from the house, evolved into the office of McInturff Architects. And last year the firm completed work on a second-story, office and library addition to an existing garage. Organic-looking stone terraces and steps interconnect the entire Craftsman-style-meets-Modern project, whose steep site measures just one acre. "The home/office-compound idea is very important to me because I work seven days a week" he says. "I like having to go outside to get to the office. It puts me in a different frame of mind, in a way that having the office inside the home wouldn't."