To say that 39 year-old Jordache Avery, a 2004 FAMU grad, has taken the city of Atlanta by storm, would be an understatement. Since launching his own firm – Xmetrical Design Studio—in the city in 2009, Avery has completed over $100 million in projects in residential and commercial office projects in 20 neighborhoods. That includes 36 modern houses in neighborhoods from Buckhead to Edgewood. Needless to say, his firm is one of the busiest boutique firms in the city.
Avery’s firm has another $40 million worth of projects under construction or on his drafting table now. One midcentury-modern renovation in Atlanta’s Collier Heights neighborhood was a finalist for an AIA Atlanta design award, and a recent Xmetrical home in Reynoldstown brought a near record-breaking price.
“It’s shocking to me,” says Avery, “how fast we’re growing.”
His firm has grown to six employees, all of them people of color, including Shreya Gera, an interior designer who’s relocated from Brooklyn. Their profiles on the firm’s website are magnets for top minority candidates across the country. “We don’t get a huge pool,” Avery says. “But I do want to promote diversity in architecture, and it’s working out so far.”
A graduate of Stanton College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, Avery entered the FAMU architecture school on a one-semester trial basis and never looked back.
Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright, Avery’s design ethos is urban modernism.
Avery’s first big project came in 2014, when his former boss Michael Corcoran a free-spirited Brit who moonlights as a rock guitarist and who’d been designing hotels, homes, and full communities around the city since the early 1970s, hired him to help design $50 million a upscale apartment project that peers down on Interstate 75 next to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
In the seven years since, Avery’s risen from an industry neophyte to a trendsetter in the realm of approachable modern. “He knows how to maximize the footprint of his projects so that they feel larger and lighter,” says Elayne DeLeo, co-founder of the MA! Architecture Tour in Atlanta. “I think he speaks to the younger homebuyers who’re looking for comfort and style on an affordable scale.”
He’s the most talented guy I’ve had,” says Corcoran. “He’s got a very nice way of detailing in the modern materials, in the metals and stuff, a clean crisp way of presenting something in its three-dimensional form . . . He can do anything.”
Avery’s firm has another $40 million worth of projects under construction or on his drafting table now. One midcentury-modern renovation in Atlanta’s Collier Heights neighborhood was a finalist for an AIA Atlanta design award, and a recent Xmetrical home in Reynoldstown brought a near record-breaking price.
“It’s shocking to me,” says Avery, “how fast we’re growing.”
His firm has grown to six employees, all of them people of color, including Shreya Gera, an interior designer who’s relocated from Brooklyn. Their profiles on the firm’s website are magnets for top minority candidates across the country. “We don’t get a huge pool,” Avery says. “But I do want to promote diversity in architecture, and it’s working out so far.”
A graduate of Stanton College Preparatory School in Jacksonville, Avery entered the FAMU architecture school on a one-semester trial basis and never looked back.
Avery’s first big project came in 2014, when his former boss Michael Corcoran a free-spirited Brit who moonlights as a rock guitarist and who’d been designing hotels, homes, and full communities around the city since the early 1970s, hired him to help design $50 million a upscale apartment project that peers down on Interstate 75 next to the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre.
In the seven years since, Avery’s risen from an industry neophyte to a trendsetter in the realm of approachable modern. “He knows how to maximize the footprint of his projects so that they feel larger and lighter,” says Elayne DeLeo, co-founder of the MA! Architecture Tour in Atlanta. “I think he speaks to the younger homebuyers who’re looking for comfort and style on an affordable scale.”
Note: adapted from a story that first appeared in Atlanta Magazine.