McInturff Architects, a seven-person firm based in Bethesda, Maryland, has a diversified client base which includes residential, commercial, small institutional and interior design. It is our belief that it is possible to make a viable, vital practice with an orientation toward small, highly crafted projects. We are involved throughout the course of our projects, from programming and schematic design through construction. Our process utilizes considerable client interaction and involvement in an effort to tailor buildings to the needs of their users. Our work has been frequently published, both locally and nationally, and the firm has received more than two hundred design awards, including a 2003 AIA Honor Award for Interior Architecture. The work of the firm is the subject of a monograph, In Detail: McInturff Architects, published in 2001 by The Images Publishing Group of Australia.

When our clients bought their 1920's four-square catalog house in an older suburb of Washington, DC they discovered a one story building of equal footprint in the backyard. Built as a photographer's studio, but never used when the neighbors shut it down, it was disconnected from the house by a hyphen that resolved a half-story level change. Our job was to integrate this room into the life of house and family.


We did this by opening up the connection between the two areas and giving the resulting family room a strong orientation to the wide side-yard garden. A spare modern aesthetic contrasts with, and compliments, the existing house. Steel windows, glass block for privacy from neighbors, and a column-free porch adjust the room to its various orientations.


Givel windows, glass block for privacy from neighbors, and a column free porch adjust the room to its various orientations. Given the generous dimensions of the room, it was possible to articulate walls and ceiling by projecting surface planes into the space without sacrificing function. Reveals between the planes conceal lights and blinds. Sparsely furnished, there is a television behind rolling doors, a fireplace and a pool table. A cantilevered bench on a glass block wall invites repose while the owner runs the table.

When our client bought this prominently sited Georgetown house he thought it needed new bathrooms. Subsequent inspection revealed that the back of the house, having been built on sixty feet of fill, was migrating south.


New helical steel piers, some more than sixty feet long, have stabilized the movement of the structure, and a new steel frame gives new rigidity to the four-story back addition that dated from the early 1970s. Removing a floor created a double-height volume from which to regard one of the best views in Washington. On the exterior, teak sunshades protect the new steel and glass facade from the south sun. Inside, a wall of books extends up through three stories.

This tiny house, designed for a University of Maryland professor of Art History, occupies a wooded ten-acre site in rural Southern Maryland. The client, who grew up in New England in a house designed by Dan Kiley, asked for two things: a simple cabin in the woods, in the spirit of the Kiley house, and the proper setting for a commissioned artwork, a sun drawing by artist Janet Saad Cook.


The cabin exists in the two asphalt-shingled, tightly functional wings. Saad Cook is in the middle, in a metal and glass room that bridges the wings. This space, which also houses the living and dining areas, is designed around this piece. Here, the sun drawing projects reflected images, which change with the movement of the sun and clouds, onto a wall-an ephemeral response to place, time and architecture. The glass wall is to the north, and the second-story bridge that connects the two wings runs in front of it. This allows the south wall to receive the projected image on a billboard-like surface, which itself allows south light in only at the floor and ceiling.

Historically, the block structure of Washington allowed, even encouraged, an outer row of middle-class townhouses on the street, and an inner row of small working-class houses on a mid-block alley or court. A handful of courts survive on Capitol Hill and one provides the site for this project. Our client had lived for a decade in such a house when he got the chance to buy the tiny adjacent house, and, more compelling, its even tinier garden. The client’s existing house occupied its entire 14x44 lot with no outdoor space. Given the owner’s nontraditional lifestyle, reflected in the layout of the existing house, there was no need, functionally, for additional rooms. The acquired space could be seen as a variety of stages and places from which to revel in all 200 square feet of the new garden.


The added house—11 feet wide, 30 feet long and two stories tall—was gutted. Party walls were stripped to the brick and painted white, and the back wall was carved away to provide a new window wall connecting interior and exterior.


New openings in the former party wall now connect the two buildings. Within the bright, open volume of the new space a stepped wooden platform is suspended, providing seating adjacent to the existing 2nd floor living room. Beneath this platform is a space that serves as a new master bedroom. Next to this, and overlooked by the platform, is a double-height volume that becomes a sort of interior courtyard for the now joined buildings, giving access from both to the garden. A balcony from the original 2nd floor living areas overlooks this space. Fir louvers in the window-wall shade the interior and provide some privacy from nearby neighbors. Conventional ideas of room types and adjacencies were of little concern; more interesting to all involved was the making of spaces ranging from intimate to theatrical, animating house and site, and getting from the small new square footage far more benefit than it had provided as a separate house.