My name is Alan Adriano MacQuarrie, and welcome to my portfolio.
On this website you’ll find a mix of things, from recent projects that I designed and built myself, highlights from my work in architectural practice, school projects, and other media that I’ve dabbled in over the years.
I grew up in Hull, Quebec, moving to Montreal at 17 to eventually study journalism and photography at Concordia. At 20, after only one year of university, I dropped out to become a full-time bicycle messenger in Montreal. This period changed my life; for the next five years I became intimate with the city, its structures, its buildings, its textures, and that experience brought me in touch with my first real passion—building.
At 24, I put a portfolio together and got into McGill’s school of architecture, where I would remain to pursue a master’s thesis project that imagined a new, public baseball stadium for the eventual return of the Montreal Expos (the drawings are featured on the site).
I graduated in 2019 and joined Atelier Schleiss Carter, a young architectural practice where I gained the bulk of my work experience. I honed my design and drafting skills on residential projects, touching every part of the design process from the first sketches to production drawings to on-site coordination.
2019 was also the year I began designing and building a workshop in the Gatineau Valley with the goal of having a space to do small woodworking projects and a place from which to eventually renovate the property’s aging main house.
The impact of this experience was huge. I realized that my passion for building was intimately linked with manual work, and that spending my professional career behind a computer would no longer be fulfilling.
In 2023, I quit my job in architecture and relocated to the Gatineau Valley—my home—in the hopes of entering the carpentry trade and, eventually, with the experience I learned in my architectural career, become a builder in the region.
In my spare time, I fix old pickup trucks, I garden when I can, I still manage to draw from time to time and do photography, and, most importantly, I keep my hands busy with building projects.
Thanks for reading.
