Johnston Architects USA

• Architecture
  We design architecture that connects people to place. Our work spans civic landmarks, community libraries, homes, and small urban interventions, all grounded in context, craft, and care for the human experience.
• Interior Design
  Through interior design, we create environments that invite connection and belonging. Our team provides full-service interior design and FF&E expertise for projects of every type and scale, supporting healthy, functional, and enduring spaces.
• Masterplanning
  Every plan begins with a sense of place. Our master planning work weaves together land, ecology, and human experience to create communities that feel grounded, enduring, and uniquely their own.
• Feasibility Studies & Needs Assessments
  Every successful project begins with understanding. Through feasibility studies, assessments, and early analyses, we uncover each site’s opportunities and challenges to guide thoughtful, achievable design.
• Adaptive Reuse
  Preserving the places that tell our shared story is central to our work. Johnston Architects partners with local authorities, preservation boards, and community stakeholders to uphold historic integrity while conserving the natural, cultural, and built environments that define our region.
• Tenant Improvements
  Every renovation is an opportunity to reconnect people and place. Our tenant improvement work revitalizes spaces through smart design and sensitive detailing, creating environments that feel fresh, functional, and distinctly their own.
• Art & Installations
  Our expertise in digital fabrication allows us to create custom installations that bring craft and creativity to any project. From large-scale public artworks to finely detailed interior elements, we design and build pieces that elevate the experience of space.
• Accessory Dwelling Units
  At JA, we’ve developed a collection of predesigned homes with plans available for purchase, each rooted in thoughtful design and livable simplicity. We also created the Casita, an interactive software tool that allows clients to design and customize their own ADU.

Ray and Mary Johnston met in graduate school at the University of Washington. “Our relationship was cemented after an uninformed and harsh critique from a professor who shall remain nameless," Ray recalls. He suggested they grab a beer at the College Inn after class. The rest is history.

After graduate school, the Johnstons ended up working for their former professors. Mary interned with the renowned Modernist, Wendell Lovett, and Ray for an up-and-coming local architect, James Cutler. They went on to build careers working at Hewitt and Cardwell Thomas, respectively.

As the Johnstons’ careers matured, so did their family. When their daughter was ten and their son was four, Mary and Ray realized they could better balance the needs of their family, and fulfill their passions as architects, working alongside one another rather than for others. In 1991, they founded Johnston Architects and started working at their kitchen table.