Architecture Background Office (ABO) is an architecture, interiors, and decorative arts firm that creates people-focused spaces. Marc McQuade, a licensed architect, started the firm in 2024 with the goal of creating buildings which are beautiful, comfortable, productive, and with the belief that well-conceived and responsibly built architecture provides the background for positive shifts in the world.

Marc McQuade, AIA, has spent over twenty years working at the highest levels of architectural practice, collaborating with leading design offices on projects spanning a wide range of locations, types, and scales. Before founding ABO, Marc was Associate Principal at Adjaye Associates, where he co-led the New York office. Over fourteen years there, he oversaw the design and construction of significant projects across North America, including buildings, interiors, competitions, exhibitions, and furniture pieces. Key projects include 130 William, an 800-foot residential tower in downtown Manhattan; the Princeton University Art Museum, an expansive arts complex on campus; Richard Avedon Murals + Portraits at the Gagosian Gallery; The Webster retail store in Los Angeles; the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.; Sugar Hill, an affordable housing, preschool, and children's museum in Harlem; Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure, a traveling exhibition; and Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park in Detroit.

Marc is a dual citizen of the United States and Switzerland, born in New York and raised both there and in the Bay Area. He received a Bachelor of Arts from U.C. Berkeley, where he competed nationally on the Cal Taekwondo team. After several years at Mäder & Partner in Switzerland, he earned a Master's Degree from the Princeton University School of Architecture, where he was awarded the Alpha Rho Chi Medal for leadership and service.

Marc is currently a Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, teaching Core III graduate studio. He was the Fall 2024 Gensler Visiting Critic at Cornell University and has taught at Princeton University and the University of Toronto, and frequently serves on juries and panels. He is the editor of Authoring: Re-placing Art and Architecture, a founding editor of Pidgin magazine, and co-editor of Landform Building: Architecture’s New Terrain with Stan Allen. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children.