
Margaret McCurry
Margaret McCurry received her Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Vassar College in 1964 and her Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University in 1987. She is the recipient of eight National Honor Awards as well as numerous Distinguished Building and Interior Architecture Awards from the American Institute of Architects Chicago Chapter and the Association of Licensed Architects. She is also the recipient of numerous Interior Design Project Awards from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) and the International Interior Designer Association (IIDA). In 1989, she was awarded the Dean of Architecture Award and the following year she was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame. In 2002, she was named “The Designer of Distinction” by ASID. Her work is widely published in architectural and interior magazines and exhibited at museums and galleries here and abroad. In 2000, a monograph of her work entitled Margaret McCurry: Constructing Twenty-Five Short Stories was published by The Monacelli Press.
Professionally, McCurry has served as vice president of AIA Chicago and chair of the National AIA Committee on Design. She has also served as vice president of the Illinois Chapter of ASID. A former board member of the Architecture and Design Society at the Art Institute of Chicago, she currently presides on the board of the Art Institute’s Textile Department. She has been president of the Alumni/ae Council of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University and served a six-year term as a director of the Harvard Alumni/ae Association. She recently completed a two-year term as president of the Harvard Club of Chicago where she oversaw the publication of the book 150 Years of the Harvard Club of Chicago: 1857–2007, and continues to serve on the board as an ex officio member.
McCurry lectures at many architectural and design conferences as well as at schools of architecture and design at major universities and has taught design studios at The School of the Art Institute, Miami University at Oxford, and the University of Illinois. In addition to authoring articles for architectural journals and catalogues, she serves on numerous design award juries and panels for the AIA and ASID as well as for the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She is also appointed to the General Services Administration’s (GSA) Public Buildings Service National Register of Peer Professionals.
McCurry’s architectural credits as principal at Tigerman McCurry Architects include the design of several variations of sustainable housing using shipping containers for a Chicago developer, mixed-use facilities and a golf clubhouse for the St. Joe Company in Florida, the Chicago Bar Association and the award-winning Juvenile Protective Association Headquarters in Chicago. She has also completed custom residences for the nationally acclaimed Prairie Crossing conservation community in northern Illinois and designed and remodeled country and town clubs, showrooms, museum installations, offices, and countless private residences throughout the country. She collaborated with Hickory Business Furniture to produce an exclusive line of executive office furnishings and fabrics, which won the IIDA IFMA Gold Award at NeoCon 1998 for Best Furniture Design System. Shortly thereafter, LandscapeForms commissioned her to design a new line of park and town center outdoor furnishings, which earned Interior Design magazine’s Best of Year Merit Award in 2006. While at in Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s Chicago office, she collaborated on such diverse projects as a 20-story headquarters office building for an insurance company, an atriumed hotel/restaurant/meeting room complex, a four-story bank, and the East Wing addition to The Art Institute of Chicago including the School of The Art Institute and The Rubloff Auditorium.
McCurry is an expert at analysis of client program needs, problem solving, and consensus building and achievement. She has become well known for her inventive synthesis of modernity and the vernacular. Years of designing and furnishing award-winning residences has honed her expertise in providing harmonious, well-proportioned, and well-designed environments that incorporate many sustainable features, both passive, such as solar orientation and natural ventilation, and active, such as geothermal wells, solar and photovoltaic panels, green roofs, radiant floors, and environmentally correct materials—all of which directly affect the quality of one’s life.
Announcements
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing
Louis Kahn: The Importance of a Drawing
Edited by Michael Merrill
Publisher: Lars Müller Publishers
Published: October 2021
The first in-depth study of drawings as primary sources of insight into architect Louis Kahn’s architecture and creative imagination. Based on unprecedented archival research, with over 900 illustrations and written contributions by Michael Benedikt, Michael Cadwell, David Leatherbarrow, Louis Kahn, Nathaniel Kahn, Sue Ann Kahn, Michael J. Lewis, Robert McCarter, Michael Merrill, Marshall Meyers, Jane Murphy, Gina Pollara, Harriet Pattison, Colin Rowe, David Van Zanten, Richard Wesley, and William Whitaker.
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People by Debbie Millman
Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World's Most Creative People
By Debbie Millman
Publisher: Harper Design
Forthcoming: February 22, 2022
Debbie Millman—author, educator, brand consultant, and host of the widely successful and award-winning podcast “Design Matters”—showcases dozens of her most exciting interviews, bringing together insights and reflections from today’s leading creative minds from across diverse fields.
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future by Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Design Emergency: Building a Better Future
By Alice Rawsthorn and Paola Antonelli
Publisher: Phaidon Press
Forthcoming May 25, 2022
Rawsthorn and Antonelli tell the stories of the remarkable designers, architects, engineers, artists, scientists, and activists who are at the forefront of positive change worldwide. Focusing on four themes—Technology, Society, Communication, and Ecology—the authors present a unique portrait of how our great creative minds are developing new design solutions to the major challenges of our time, while helping us to benefit from advances in science and technology.
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn by Harriet Pattison
Our Days Are Like Full Years: A Memoir with Letters from Louis Kahn
By Harriet Pattison
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: October 2020
An intimate glimpse into the professional and romantic relationship between Harriet Pattison and the renowned architect Louis Kahn. Harriet Pattison, FASLA, is a distinguished landscape architect. She was Louis Kahn’s romantic partner from 1959 to 1974, and his collaborator on the landscapes of the Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, and the F.D.R. Memorial/Four Freedoms Park, New York. She is the mother of their son, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn.
Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context by David Raizman
Reading Graphic Design History: Image, Text, and Context
By David Raizman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
Published: December 2020
An innovative approach to graphic design that uses a series of key artifacts from the history of print culture in light of their specific historical contexts. It encourages the reader to look carefully and critically at print advertising, illustration, posters, magazine art direction, and typography, often addressing issues of class, race, and gender.
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian by Rick Poynor
David King: Designer, Activist, Visual Historian
By Rick Poynor
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: September 2020
A comprehensive overview of the work and legacy of David King (1943–2016), whose fascinating career bridged journalism, graphic design, photography, and collecting. King launched his career at Britain’s Sunday Times Magazine in the 1960s, starting as a designer and later branching out into image-led journalism, blending political activism with his design work.
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