Northshore Magazine

ne Restore Ruins to Riches Matthew Cummings stands inside a crumbling house that has since been restored. architecture Old Soul Matthew Cummings has one hand in Ipswich's history while the other shapes its future. By Alexandra Pecci it might be hard to believe that the man behind many of the North Shore's stately and elegant homes was a "problem child." But Matthew Cummings, owner of Ipswich-based Cummings Architects, says regular school didn't click for him. He didn't like rules. He was a free-thinker in a system that didn't encourage that. "I just didn't pay attention in school. The regular classes just didn't interest me frankly," Cummings says. "I was bored. And I never really followed other people's instructions." That might be a good way to describe his approach to architecture, too. He's anti-generic and anti-"big box," opting for customized, personalized designs that speak to people's real lives. Cummings discovered his talent for drafting and architecture as a freshman transfer student to a vocational high school in Wakefield. "When I got there, it was immediately apparent that I had a three-dimensional mind and was artistic," he says. "I had no idea." Soon, he says his focus became singular: "Design awesome houses." "Everyone has their own way of learning," he says. "I wanted to learn things at night and actually apply them the next day, and do it for real. I didn't want to wait 10 years. I wanted to do it right then." And he did do things "right then." In his early 20s, while still in school at Boston Architectural College, Cummings was an architectural job captain, designing new and renovated Shingle-style homes on the North Shore. By the time he was 30, he was licensed and had his own firm. "What I had done for almost 13 years prior to turning 30 was architecture 24 hours a day," he says. "My friends were 68 nshoremag.com March 2014 68_REV_NB KJ NS Mar14 Restore.indd 68 going to concerts, and I stayed home and worked on design." Matthew Cummings has come a long way from his "problem child" days. In fact, he hopes his designs will make a difference in the world. One place Cummings is making a difference is Ipswich, where he lives and works. Although much of his background had been in working on Shingle-style homes, those opulent "American castles," he seized an opportunity in 2003 to restore photographs by eric roth 1/17/14 2:14 PM

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