Design-Led Residential Projects, Nationwide
For the right home anywhere in the country, a principal-led studio carrying full artistic direction, with remote-capable design and trusted trades on the ground.
Some of the most meaningful homes are not built where the family first put down roots. A primary residence in one city, a long-held property in another, a new chapter on a coast or in the mountains, design-led work increasingly crosses state lines, and the homeowner's eye for it does not stop at the Midwest. Martire Custom Homes accepts a small number of projects nationwide, beyond Chicago and its suburbs and the lakefront communities the studio knows well. The brief in these places is rarely about a single regional style; it is about a home that answers honestly to its setting and its owner, wherever that setting happens to be. What travels is the way the work is held: a single, principal-led voice reading the land, the architecture and the life intended to unfold there, and carrying that understanding from pre-architect planning through finishes and styling.
A Home That Answers to Its Place
Architecture means different things in different parts of the country, and a serious project deserves a designer fluent enough to listen before she speaks. A shingled house on a New England shore, a stone-and-timber lodge in the mountain west, a low modern house in the desert, a historic townhouse in an established city, each carries its own vocabulary of light, material and proportion, and each rewards restraint over imposition. Rather than arrive with a signature to apply, Martire begins by reading the place: how the home greets its setting, where the light falls across a day and a season, and what the regional architecture is quietly asking to keep. From that reading, the design takes shape, new millwork, cabinetry, lighting, drapery, materials and finishes drawn into conversation with the home rather than laid over it, so the work reads as though it always belonged there.
This is why Courtenay Martire is best engaged early, in the pre-architect, pre-construction phase. Brought in before the plans are fixed, she can select or work alongside a local architect, guide or shape the drawings to the site, and hold the full artistic direction of the project as one coherent idea from the first conversation onward.
Remote-Capable Direction, Trusted Hands on the Ground
A project at a distance asks for a particular kind of practice, and the studio is built for it. Design direction is genuinely remote-capable, concepts, plans, material and finish selections, joinery and lighting detail, and the running creative decisions of a build can be carried with clarity from afar, with the homeowner kept close to every meaningful choice rather than asked to manage it. Where the work calls for it, Courtenay travels: to read a site that cannot be read from drawings, to walk a home before it is touched, to be present at the moments that decide whether a space succeeds. On the ground, the studio works alongside vetted local trades and artisans, the cabinetmakers, finishers and craftspeople whose hands the design depends on, extending Martire's long-standing partnerships into a new region rather than gambling on the unknown. The result is continuity that does not depend on the principal living down the road, or on the homeowner being on site.
One Voice, Wherever the Home Is
A home far from where life is mostly lived carries its own weight. It may be the place a family gathers, the setting of a next chapter, the house that holds the years to come, and that emotional measure deserves design that is genuinely personal rather than merely accomplished. Drawing on a background that moves fluidly between art, fashion, photography, music and architecture, Courtenay crafts each homeowner's soul print into spaces that feel inevitable: thoughtful, well-built and unmistakably theirs. Because the studio is selective by nature, a nationwide project is taken on only where it is the right fit and can be given the attention it deserves, substantial luxury renovations, additions, custom homes, whole-home transformations and full design-led interiors, typically from $300K and well upward. The relationship is the point. Roughly nine in ten clients return, and it is that trust, more than any address, that decides where the work goes next.
A studio suited to homes of this calibre.
- Principal-led from the first conversation, Courtenay Martire holds the artistic direction of the entire project rather than handing it between trades or distances.
- Genuinely remote-capable design direction, with travel to the site for the moments that matter, so a project away from home is held with continuity and calm.
- Trusted local trade and artisan partnerships extended into each new region, rather than unknown hands chosen by chance.
- Best engaged pre-architect and pre-construction, where she can select or work alongside a local architect and shape the plans to the site before they are fixed.
- Selective by nature, a small number of nationwide projects accepted, each given the attention substantial design-led work deserves.
Good to know.
Do you really take on projects outside the Chicago area?
Yes, though selectively. Alongside Chicago, its suburbs and the lakefront communities of Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, the studio accepts a small number of design-led residential projects nationwide. These are chosen carefully, so that each can be given the full attention a substantial renovation, custom home or interior deserves.
How does the design work at a distance?
Direction is remote-capable by design, concepts, plans, material and finish selections, millwork and lighting detail, and the running decisions of a build are carried with clarity from afar, keeping you close to every meaningful choice. Where a site or moment calls for it, Courtenay travels in person, and the studio works alongside vetted local trades and artisans on the ground.
What kind of project is the right fit nationwide?
The studio is suited to design-led work from roughly $300K and well upward, luxury renovations, additions, custom homes, whole-home transformations and full interiors. If a meaningful home is taking shape somewhere beyond the Midwest, it is well worth a conversation about whether ours are the right hands for it.
If a home is taking shape somewhere beyond the Midwest, we would be glad to hear its story and the place it belongs to.