McLinden’s path into architecture emerged from a foundation in industrial design, graphic systems, and freelance design experience.
Early work with UX/UI systems, web development, and product design projects have sharpened his sensitivity to human behavior and effective visual communication— tools that serve the stories of others while challenging expected conventions.
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Architecture, is where those tools scale up. The scope shifts.
Where Industrial design is something you can hold, wear, drive, tow, and or discard; architecture is the more phenomenological process of reacting to the invention of making certain spaces, or creating a certain set of forms, or y adding a number of squeaky doors.
Architecture is to be lived.
If a window can be considered a product, then a building is a dialogue between thousands of parts. Each joint, surface connection, and space created becomes a choice.
Architecture operates at a macroscopic scale — concerned with permanence, place, and long-term use — yet it depends entirely on the microscopic precision of countless parts working in harmony for there to be integrity and balance.
The lady grace
A design for residential cm2 mixed-use housing in se portland.
June2025
This project reflects an early synthesis of McLinden's approach of the multiplicity of 'product-based architecture.' The design began microscopic, shifted into the macroscopic, and tries to weave them together with both material, technology, and form.
This design incorporates autonomous PV-powered louver systems, passive climate strategies, and prefabricated elements; engaging the principles of adaptable and sustainable construction. This work was also done in tangent to the guidelines set for the Living Building Challenge 'Net-Zero' Energy standards LBC4.0.
The work draws from both product design GD&T principles, along with architectural proportion; The Lady Grace House demonstrates how surgical-like interventions can have lasting, place-based impacts.
At its core, the project serves as a prototype for future-forward residential solutions, loosely inspired by the work of Lacaton & Vassal, and the Daniel express deconstructivist style of Daniel Libeskind. A blend of technological risk with top-quality material considerations.
