Tigerman McCurry Architects

They remodeled my house, a 1950's ranch style modern house. Many improvements were made in lighting, traffic patterns, addition to kitchen and enlargement with new breakfast room, new fabulous master bathroom with skylight and walk in shower with stone floor. The house was updated, improved but the additions were so seamless that a writer from Architectural Digest had to come see it for himself! McCurry was a dream to work with, low key, no high pressure, but a clean, elegant aesthetic. It looks like it was built yesterday.

I have had the privilege of working with Margaret McCurry as an associate architect on a re-cently completed ranch house in Sonoma County, CA. Not only did Margaret and her team exhibit the highest level of professionalism, but they were creative, responsive, and all around great fun to work with and to be with.. The clients are very happy. I could not recommend another firm as highly as Tigerman McCurry Architects.

Tigerman McCurry, Stanley and Margaret, began working on our property in Southwestern Michigan by adding an addition to an old house designed by an anonymous architect, but sited and landscaped by Jens Jensen. My late husband and I loved our house, named the Dormers in 1919 by its first owners. We wanted the quite large, unheated porch at one end to be turned into a year-round room with a second floor that would provide a sitting room/study for us and a much needed private bathroom. We wanted the addition to be seamless. “Don’t change a thing,” we said. And they didn’t, but they did. We got a bigger, beautiful porch with French doors around three sides and a flag-stone floor that referenced Jensen’s stone bridges on our circular drive. We got our sitting room looking out at Lake Michigan and a very cunning bathroom tucked into a big dormer. Margaret and Stanley came and went on tip toe and in their respectful design there was, for us, pure joy. Fifteen years later, our children decided to build two houses behind The Dormers on the footprint of a house that we’d bought some ten years before. The younger brother, married with two older children, would occupy one house and an unmarried older brother would share a house with a younger sister, married with a baby. There were three sets of programmatic needs and a future that was uncertain in terms of family additions with the shared house. There were seven people to satisfy and two houses that needed to relate—sibling houses for the siblings. And this time, the assignment was to be Contemporary with a capital C. Quite miraculously, Margaret and Stanley were able to give both houses commanding views of Lake Michigan—without me losing mine!— and with no loss of space. The houses were as different as the children and as compatible. Their materials were the same and their volumes, but with subtle variances. Separated by a landscaped corridor, which offers a formal stepped pathway to the Lake, privacy was achieved effortlessly. The houses can sleep large numbers of guests, but they don’t look at all oversized. The architecture is full of restraint and elegance and, perhaps because they are so Contemporary, a delicious hedonism. Visiting my family, I not only move from one century to another, but from cozy cottage to glamorous lake-side resorts. I love it. And so do they.

We love our new combination garage and art studio and are grateful to Tigerman McCurry for designing such a creative, functional miniature building for us! The project all came about after critters had eaten the base from under our 100 year old garage which faced our cottage in Lakeside, Michigan! The architects’ magic became evident after discovering several restrictions including working with a designer/owner and engineer, a small, 400 square foot allowable footprint, a tight budget and the design challenge of connecting the new structure visually with the historic cottage. Our project was completed without delay and within budget. Tigerman-McCurry won an AIA award for the creative use of materials and detailed construction. We enjoy it every weekend! Eva Maddox

We have worked with Tigerman McCurry Associates (TMA) for the design of two homes. The first time was in 2006 when we did an extensive remodeling of our old Victorian house. TMA’s work was splendid, though at the time Margaret McCurry told us: “You should just tear down this house and build the house you really want.” We weren’t ready then to follow her advice. By 2013, we had decided that the old Victorian – standing on that lot since 1888 and our home for 25 years of it - was not a good house for us to grow old in. With Margaret and Stanley Tigerman’s urging, we searched for a place to either remodel or build a new house. Nothing we found matched the convenient location of our existing home. So we decided to tear down the old one and build a new house on the same site. Starting in the summer of 2013, we met regularly in the TMA conference room. With the constraints of a relatively small suburban lot, the design concept had few options. Margaret sketched the basic design in one of our first meetings and over the next several months we developed the program details – ten rooms, each with a unique purpose + 3 bathrooms. Two of the upstairs rooms have adjacent spaces plumbed for bathrooms, so the house can become a five bedroom home for the next owner. At our age, we don’t need five bedrooms; we use the entire second floor as our private space – our bedroom, bathroom and closet suite + one room that we use as an office and another that we use for meditation and exercise. The old house was demolished in June 2014. On TMA’s advice, we contracted with Bulley & Andrews to manage the construction. The TMA/Bulley & Andrews team was terrific. Our home is beautifully designed AND wonderfully built. We moved in at the end of June 2015, and have spent the past twelve months learning its intricacies. It is wonderful. Our regular (essentially weekly) meetings at TMA’s offices – with Bulley & Andrews always in attendance - allowed us to refine the details and make decisions quickly. This enabled the project to move ahead and finish within a year. Margaret and her team paid exquisite attention to the details for each room as well as the exterior appearance. For us, one of the highlights of the design is window design. Light flows in through the windows – both sunlight and moonlight – and creates unexpected and constantly changing shadows on on the black concrete floors and white walls. As we write this in our office on the second floor, it feels as if we are in a tree-house. We have lived on this same site now for 28 years; in this house, it feels like an entirely different setting. Margaret and TMA have designed a gem!

Tigerman McCurry designed two homes for me that were completed in 1996 and 1997 -- an apartment in Chicago, Illinois and a house in Aspen, Colorado. Both residences are in the contemporary vernacular and the results are geometric and symmetrical. The completed residences appeared in Architectural Digest in the late 1990's. Working with the firm was a pure joy. Margaret and Stanley collaborated on the projects but Margaret took the lead with the interiors. The results were similar in feeling. Both residences exude warmth and elegance and provide lovely spaces for entertaining. Because I am an art collector, many museum tours have passed through both spaces, and the architecture and interior design receive as many compliments as the artworks. It is not surprising that both spaces have received significant professional awards. Working with both principals was a pure delight. Even today, I continue to work with Margaret on the Chicago apartment on various small projects. She is always available to me. I love working with her.