A principal in the architectural and design firm of Tigerman McCurry and a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, Margaret McCurry received her Bachelor’s degree in Art History from Vassar College and her Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. She is the recipient of many Honor Awards from the National AIA, numerous Distinguished Building and Interior Architecture Awards from the Chicago Chapter, and both National and Local Interior Design Project Awards from the American Society of Interior Designers (ASID). In 1989 she was awarded the Dean of Architecture Award, in 1990 she was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame and was named “The Designer of Distinction” in 2002 by ASID and in 2009 Traditional Home Magazine named McCurry an “Icon of Design.” In 2012, she was elevated to Fellow by the International Interior Design Association. Her work has been published widely in architectural and interior magazines and exhibited at museums and galleries here and abroad. It is documented in a monograph, Margaret McCurry: Constructing Twenty-Five Short Stories (2000) published by Monacelli Press as well as Distillations: The Architecture of Margaret McCurry, published by ORO Editions (2011).
Professionally, McCurry has served as Vice-President of the Chicago Chapter and Chair of the National AIA Committee on Design. She also served as Vice-President of the Illinois Chapter of ASID. She serves on the boards of the Architecture and Design Society as well as the Textile Department at the Art Institute of Chicago and is a member of The Women’s Board as well as the Visiting Committee of the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. She has been President of the Alumni/ae Council of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University also serving a six year term as a Director of the Harvard Alumni/ae Association and a two year term as President of the Harvard Club of Chicago overseeing the publication of the book 150 Years of the Harvard Club of Chicago: 1857-2007.
McCurry has lectured at many architectural and design conferences as well as schools of architecture and design at major universities and has taught design studios. In addition to being the author of articles for architectural journals and catalogs, she has served on numerous design award juries for AIA and ASID components as well as the National Endowment for the Arts and the American Collegiate Schools of Architecture. She has also been appointed to the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) Public Buildings Service National Register of Peer Professionals.
McCurry’s building credits encompass eleven years in Skidmore Owings and Merrill’s Chicago office where she collaborated as a programmer, designer and manager 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.
Her architectural credits as principal in Tigerman McCurry include the design and/or remodeling of condominiums, country and town clubs, showrooms, museum installations, offices and countless private residences throughout the country. Chicago area projects include the Chicago Bar Association, the Award-winning Juvenile Protective Association Headquarters, the Louis Kahn Travel Sketches exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, and the much published Prairie Crossing conservation community housing in collaboration with two other Chicago firms. Nationally, she was commissioned by St. Joe to design time share condos, mixed-use facilities and a golf clubhouse in the Florida panhandle. She has repurposed shipping containers into sustainable housing units and is currently developing apartments and townhouses for a large-scale urban complex along the Mississippi River.
For the furnishings industry, McCurry has introduced a line of executive office furniture and fabrics through Hickory Business Furniture, which won the IIDA IFMA Gold Award at NeoCon 1998 for Best Furniture Design System. Her Lakeside Collection of park and town center furnishings for Landscape Forms received Interior Design Magazine’s Best of the Year Award in 2006 followed by the recent introduction of the WindMark Collection a second line of outdoor dining furniture.
An expert at the analysis of client program needs, consensus building and problem solving, McCurry has become well known for her inventive synthesis of modern classicism and the vernacular. Years of designing and furnishing award winning residences across the country has honed her expertise in providing harmonious, well-proportioned and well-designed environments that directly contribute to the quality of living.