Evan McCurdy
Q: Tell me about your background
I grew up in Pleasant Hill, CA - about a 45 minute drive East of San Francisco. When I wasn’t playing baseball, my childhood was spent visiting job sites with my dad, who is a contractor. There was an early connection with the architects my dad introduced me to at a young age – particularly Donald Olsen. I went to Diablo Valley College and transferred to UC Berkeley to study architecture, where I graduated in 2016.
Q: Who’s in your family?
My dad is a general contractor, who worked primarily on residential remodels in the Berkeley Hills. My mom works with attorneys in the ethics department for the State Bar of CA. I have a brother (seven years younger), who is a pre-med student at UC Davis. They all have a deep love for nature, food, and cooking.
Q: When did you first develop an interest in architecture?
When I was eleven years old, I was given a school project to build a scale model of a house. A lot of my peers built dollhouses, but my dad suggested that I build a replica of a Don Olsen house instead. It’s a truly modern international style house built in the 1950’s. All my classmates brought in McMansions and I came in with a modern glass box floating on pilotis. It was the first architectural project I ever worked on; I remember thinking it was super fun to build something using scale and thinking spatially. It was also the first school project that didn’t feel like homework – I wanted to do it.
Q: What kinds of projects do you most enjoy working on?
Any project with a creative and collaborative team that really values design and sustainability.
Q: Are you excited about any projects in particular right now?
I’m really excited about a guest house we’re designing on a site in San Rafael that is already home to an incredible mid century Henrik Bull residence. It’s truly inspiring and humbling to work on a small project that has to fit in and hold its own alongside an architectural gem.
Q: Do you have any odd pet peeves?
When people don’t print drawings to scale.
Q: How long have you worked at Feldman Architecture?
I interned at FA in the summer of 2015 before my last year at UC Berkeley and came back to work full time in the summer of 2016.
Q: Do you have a professional role model?
Several - Peter Zumthor, Don Olsen, Louis Kahn, Julia Morgan, and Rem Koolhaas to name a few.
Q: What’s your design process like?
It’s always evolving, non-linear, and highly focused on taming complex ideas and site conditions into simple, elegant architecture. I love using iterative sketching, model making, and conceptual diagrams to distill design into its most essential parts.
