Cincinnati Black Music Walk of Fame

Location: Cincinnati, OH

Program: Public park and interactive pathway

Construction: 2023

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Design Architect

THP, Architect of Record / Structural Engineer

Kleingers, Landscape Designer

JRA, Digital Experience Design

DNK, Planning Consultants

Colina Nouă Master Plan

Location: Colina Nouă, Romania

Construction: 2020

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Micro-Cabin

Location: Poiana, Romania

Design: 2019

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Humpert House

Location: Northern Kentucky

Program: Private Residence

Construction: 2018

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Leonard Athletic Center at CCDS

Location: Indian Hill, OH

Program: Atheltics

Construction: 2016

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Early Childhood Center at CCDS

Location: Indian Hill, OH

Program: Early Childhood Education and Recreation

Construction: 2016

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Maintenance Facility at CCDS

Location: Indian Hill, OH

Program: Maintenance and Repair

Construction: 2015

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Prospect Green

Location: Cincinnati, OH

Program: Multi-unit Residential

Construction: 2015

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Design Architect

Cincinnati Country Day Schools - Lower School

Location: Indian Hill, OH

Program: Educational Administration and Media Space

Construction: 2014

Project Credits:

michael mcinturf ARCHITECTS, Architect

Cincinnati Country Day School - Tennis Complex

Indian Hill, OH

Built, 2013

The distinct canopy of the new Cincinnati Country Day Tennis Complex establishes a unique sense of identity for a championed tennis program, and creates a formalized gathering space for the growing program.  The pavilion rises cleanly above the tennis courts, creating shade for spectators and demarcating a place for gathering. Its geometry is offset one bay relative to the court center line axis giving a dynamic view of the canopy from the courts. A leaf shaped canopy collects roof water runoff channeled to a single spout on the low end that nourishes a rain garden with reused water.

The geometry of the canopy flows along a central spine that directs user views towards both the singles courts to the east and doubles courts to the west. The small building below the canopy enables much needed storage for the complex, provides drinking fountains, and displays multiple plaques documenting the past champions from the program's rich history. Wrapped in a vertical lapped hardwood siding, the materiality contrasts the white steel canopy and introduces a warm, inviting texture also found at the backdrop to the Northern entry bench. This bench at the North end of the flowing spine announces the entry with a dynamic CNC milled vertical lap siding cut at an angle along a curve that acts as a backdrop for signage.

Private Residence

Covington, KY

Built, 2012

The project site is located at the geographical terminus of a ridgeline drive, establishing a spectacular overlook to the Ohio River Valley, which contains Cincinnati and its outlying communities. A diversity of cultural contexts are visible from the site, ranging from a serene and pastoral river valley to an active urban center.

The preliminary layout of the project was a resultant of the limited site approach from the south and the controlled expansion of various spatial “tubes” towards predominant views. While some areas of the residence open up to these vistas, there are many moments within the final plan layout that intentionally deny views until they can be properly framed by the architecture.

Indian Hill Swim Club

Cincinnati, OH

Built

When the long-established swim and tennis club called for a new facility, the resulting modern architecture seamlessly negotiated club traditions and aspirations for future success. The project vision translated the simple charm and casual feeling of the original 1950’s post-and-beam design into a clean-lined modern result. 

The site design subdivided modular sections based on the pool and tennis court dimensions serving as the primary activity zones. The building integrates into interstitial spaces between these zones connecting various site elevations and anchoring architecture to landscape.

Layered Assembly – Focused on prefabrication, the building components respond to specific project performances. The base layer of hollow core precast planks on foundation enabled efficient staging of the main floor. As a modern translation of the original post and beam design, a steel post and beam system added rigorous organizational logic. SIPS (Structurally Insulated Panels) then layered onto the primary frame, insulating interior spaces, and utilized efficient off-site prefabrication. A prefabricated cedar shake rainscreen system installed over the SIPS panels skinned the panels to shed water while allowing the shell to breathe. A striking brise soleil of cedar slats provides the final layer, screening the summer sun along the southern facade, while mediating interior and exterior.

Cincinnati Country Day School - Upper School

Cincinnati, OH

Built

The design strategy for the Upper School at Cincinnati Country Day is seen as a mediator of the multiple levels of exchange inherent in both the school and the program. The primarily traditional, surrounding residential community embraces the private, progressively competitive educational campus. Programmatically, Cincinnati Country Day embeds a strong initiative toward technological leadership and advancement, within a child-centered curriculum.

The building embraces the need for flexibility over time, maintaining some building components while replacing or removing others. A fluid skin stretches from the flowing landscape to blanket the building, contorting as it flows to respond to the activity beneath. The roof thereby accentuates the surrounding rolling terrain, extending it to the roof surface.

The dominant existing rectilinear geometry of the campus moves freely within and outside the skin. Simultaneously, a new interiority is developed through the establishment of irregularly shaped Student Centers, Learning Spaces representing the more regularized classrooms, and Interactive Zones that occur within the resultant areas. The composition thereby attempts to strike a constant balance between the rational geometries of the school’s foundations and the unpredictable, yet positive, dynamism of its future.

Offices for Procter & Gamble

Cincinnati, OH

Concept

Located on the second floor of the P&G headquarters in Cincinnati, the project involves the articulation and coordination of various programmatic elements to assist the Internal Design Department. The identity of each element was explored three dimensionally as a series of typological surfaces that took on unique expressions through materiality and form.

This systematic approach to design allowed for the creation of stimulating work environments within the rigid formal geometries of the existing Procter & Gamble World Headquarters.

OMV Aktiengesellschaft Visitor Center

Schwechat, Austria

Concept

The Hydrogen House is a demonstration and visitor center for the exhibition of new hydrogen, solar, and low energy technology for the Austrian Mineral Oil Company OMV. Inside the building, computer animations, video sequences, and still images are projected onto a translucent fabric screen which divides the interior into two zones. When the interior lighting is shifted, visitors can see the cutting-edge energy system appear behind this screen. The overall form of the building and the alignment of its shading and photovoltaic cells were determined by a computer simulation of solar conditions, and the visual permeability of the pavilion's sweeping surfaces was calibrated by simulating views from autobahn traffic arriving and departing the city.

Rail and Seating Prototype

Cincinnati, OH

Concept, 2012

Prototype bench design. Assembly of CNC bent tubes and lasercut structural profiles fluidly morphs between seating and guard conditions. 

Faith Christian Church

New Philadelphia, OH

Built, 2009

The Faith Christian Church's design began strongly influenced by two primary metaphors; the Biblical Tabernacle, mathematically described in the book of Exodus as the origin of ritual worship; and the visually active landscape of cornfields, that until recently, occupied the 14 acre site with a repetitive linearity of place and a recognizable utilitarian agricultural aesthetic. Although interesting and desirable, neither metaphor was able to totally withstand the economic challenges of a fledgling congregation in search of a new home. Site efficiencies, future expandability, and construction economy became primary project influences, and ultimately, the new representational image…

At 29,000 SF and less than eighty dollars per square foot, Phase One was developed for ease of future westerly expansion and to take economic advantage of a pre-engineered frame and cladding package placed simply on the land. Not unlike the traditional Midwestern barn found alongside country roads, the architecture stands as an isolated object in the landscape.

The front foundation wall, curved and asymmetrical, enables visual frontage on two sides, and retains the earth for lower level educational rooms that no longer function as barn stalls. The approach road rises to meet the primary entry for formal upper level spaces, while the white metal clad skin, formally, and symmetrically, stands before you.

Tractors pulling trailers loaded with hay are still welcome here, but the primary uses are for worship, community dinners, and an administrative home to the clergy. The building skin's symmetrical purity is broken by the stair armature that distributes congregants gathered from the parking area or returning from the playfield.

Cincinnati Design Awards (2012) Honorable Mention. American Institute of Architects 

Offices for M3 Properties

Cincinnati, OH

Built, 2004

Located in the historic Over-the-Rhine district of Cincinnati, the project involves the insertion of modern corporate offices and an open-studio architectural firm into a 1910 concrete and brick automobile showroom. Existing historical elements of the building were restored, most notably the ornate stone façade, according to Federal Historic Preservation Guidelines.

The four equal bays of the original storefront transform into horizontal ribbons flowing continuously across the lower level to form the walls, floors, and ceilings of the lower level offices. They extrude and distort to define the offices and waiting area before terminating in the containment of the meeting room. Simultaneously, a series of vertical tubes enclose the plumbing and circulation utilities of the facility. These tubes link the corporate offices of the lower level with the open second floor loft studio.

In contrast to the longitudinal ribbons of the lower level which introduce visitors to the space and lead them to the meeting room, the upper level studio utilizes transverse surfaces within the existing concrete bay structure to maximize visual connectivity. These surfaces fold and tear to define workstations, shelving, and display space. Three existing skylights are transformed into light beacons to introduce northern light into the space and define project zones.

The rear circulation zone is extruded to the roof to define an enclosed lounge with access to the grass roof garden, an eco-friendly oasis within the downtown environment.

University of Cincinnati Boathouse

Wilder, KY

Concept, 2004  

Germinating in the practicum studio of the University of Cincinnati’s architecture department, a group of students proposed designing a boathouse for the women’s varsity and men’s club teams.

As professor of the studio, Michael McInturf carried the original idea of the project into his private practice and allowed it to grow within critical practice. The theoretical position of the design began with the student’s study of the rowing stroke and developed through his practice into a comprehensive investigation of the physiology and mechanics of the rowing cycle. The design developed through multiple explorations in sketches, physical models, computer models and animations.

The model began as a singular expression of the rowing cycle as it relates to the pulse of energy generated during the cycle. This diagram is characterized by two curves, each describing individual aspects of the rowing cycle. This initial diagram was then animated through multiple instances and attached to the site where it found itself adapting to the landscape and the site forces inherent on the property. These site dynamics contributed significantly to the development of the building. Physical and theoretical constructs such as flooding sequences, topographic edges, movement patterns and abandoned bridge piers.

Picnic Pavilion

New Philadelphia, OH

Built, 2003

FCC.np.pav was designed and built to commence fundraising for FCC.np Phase One. It consists of a picnic pavilion and concession building located adjacent to the building site surrounded by recreational fields.

Related Projects: FCC.np, CCDS.tns

ProScan International Corporate Headquarters & Lecture Theater

Cincinnati, OH

Built, 2000

ProScan International is a world-renowned leader in MRI expertise. The corporate office headquarters and lecture theater consolidates their corporate offices into a single location, while also providing a seminar lecture theater for the education of medical professionals from around the world. 

The ten corporate offices, orthogonal and regularized in plan, line the perimeter walls of the space, thereby allowing each office to receive daylight. The lecture theater fills the void formed by the placement of these offices. ProScan views this theater as the image for the recognition of ProScan as a leader in MRI expertise internationally. It contains state of the art audio-visual equipment that requires a blackened spaces, thus spatially dictating the logical placement of the theater in the middle of the floor plate.

The formal strategy of the project incorporates a simple organizational system of two overlapping rectangular volumes within the space. These volumes represent public and private space allocation and imply the formation of a third volume at the center of the interior space. This interior third volume became the lecture theater – the primary focus of the spatial and material experimentation in the project.

The form of the theater is an extrusion of the rectilinear grid of the offices stretched across the theater space, with the individual strips reacting to the directional audio and visual lines of communication of the four major components of the lecture theater: audience, projection system, screen and orator.

Korean Presbyterian Church

Queens, NY

Built, 1999

The design of the Korean Presbyterian Church began in 1995 with the limited partnership of Michael McInturf, Greg Lynn (Hoboken, New Jersey), and Douglas Garofalo (Chicago, Illinois). The project involved the adaptive reuse of the existing 90,000 square foot Knickerbocker Laundry factory, with a 50,000 square foot addition. The lower level of the 1932 two-story factory was renovated into 70 classrooms, while the upper level was transformed into an 800 seat cafeteria, a 600 seat wedding chapel, a library, a day care, and offices.

The addition is suspended above the existing building as an independent structural entity, containing a 2,500-seat sanctuary and a 200-seat choir. Its unique design was realized within the client's limited budget through the management of the forms and dimensions using extremely advanced computer aided design and fabrication technology. An S-shaped lobby/circulation spine punches through the entire complex, shifting the main entrance from the street to the west to the new south parking lot.

The new sections of the building are clad primarily in metal panels, standing-seam metal sheathing, translucent and transparent glazings. The internal circulation cores are rendered in stucco. The expansion of the building provided for the preservation and restoration of the building’s distinctive Art Deco façade, which is a familiar sight to passing Amtrak and Long Island Rail Road commuters.

The Korean Presbyterian Church of New York received an Honor Award by the American Institute of Architects - Cincinnati Chapter, a Citation Award for New Building by the American Institute of Architects - Ohio Chapter, a First Place Bronze Plaque by the Queens Chamber of Commerce Building Awards Competition, and a Progressive Architecture Citation by Architecture Magazine. It has been featured in exhibitions in New York City, Queens, and the upcoming Digital/Real exhibit at the Deutsches Architektur Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. The project has also received wide-spread covering, including articles in Architectural Record, Architecture, A+U: Architecture and Urbanism, Architecture New York, Blueprint, Casabella, Cincinnati Enquirer, deArchitect, Los Angeles Times, Metropolis, Miami Herald, New York Magazine, New York Times, Time Magazine and World Architecture. The Church will also be featured in contemporary architecture, a forthcoming book from Benedikt Taschen Publishing.

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, IL

Design Competition

The proposal for the conversion of the North American Building to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago considers architecture as a field condition: it is continuous yet varied – a dynamic, interconnected network of elements. In this landscape, variation and adaptability form a porous structure within which fields of information are transmitted, exchanged, modified and mutated, open to the influence of chance encounters and unanticipated adjacencies. The performance criteria of such a place must move beyond functionality in order to truly succeed as a center for innovation.

Instead of relying on the older, hierarchical model of the Big Idea in architecture, pursuing a constellation of smaller ideas will allow the creation of an open field, thereby meeting the School’s mandate for fluid interactivity and maximum flexibility. The existing structure is conceived of as a series of stacked landscapes of technology where speculation on the nature and role of digital media may be critically addressed in the form of experimental work. Here, spatial connectivity, luminous expansiveness and material repetition are interactive elements that establish the field condition.

The vertical data-streaming wall exemplifies the building’s spatial connectivity. Conceived of as a sinuous weave of plastic ribbons, computer monitors, vitrines, and data jacks, this scrim wall located directly adjacent to the elevator banks runs the full height of the building. The wall is a flexible site that can accommodate functions as diverse as displaying video installations, housing critiques, and disseminating departmental and interdepartmental information. In addition, the wall is the spine of the nervous system - conduit that carries lighting, power and data functions to each floor becomes an element within the weave of the wall. This conduit feeds into a secondary system suspended from the ceiling, allowing for flexibility without interrupting floor space or requiring conventional wall jacks.

Open floor plans and the Interlounges create an atmosphere of luminous expansiveness, both physically and metaphorically. Classrooms and critique spaces are situated around the central core. Partitions are limited here to take advantage of the ample natural light that enters each floor from the south and the east. This ensures permeability between the classrooms to maximize opportunities for the dynamic and incidental exchange of ideas and information, which is crucial to a twenty-first century school for the arts.

Michael McInturf Architects + Garofalo Architects

Tibetan Rug

Design Competition

As part of Elson & Company’s Architects Collection, this rug explores the spiritual landscape of Tibetan culture: the idea of the individual as the receptacle of transformation, the link between the spiritual and the physical, and the establishment of collective responsibility.

Private Residence

Cincinnati, OH

Concept, 1997

This private residence investigated possible synthetic landscapes for its rural, densely wooded site. The design mediates the clients’ desire for an octagonal house and their interest in contemporary art.

An analogy was drawn between the clients’ octagonal precedent and the cross section of a tree trunk. Since the growth of a plant is directly related to the available light, the house grew in a time-based computer environment that mimicked the solar conditions of the site.

The resultant form of the pith, cambium and bark layers of the tree/house organized the planning principles of the house.