Jeremy Cutts had a large pizza waiting for him, but a granola bar caught his eye. It was a moment he often remembers decades later, as he ponders how to reshape affordable communities through thoughtful, equity-driven design.
Now an associate architect at Williams Blackstock Architects in Birmingham, Alabama, Cutts grew up between two economic worlds. His daily life with his mother and two younger sisters taught him that he could endure and overcome anything, no matter how rough things got, while summers spent with his father, an engineer in Atlanta, expanded his vision of what was possible.
At a Glance
Company: Williams Blackstock Architects
Title: Associate
Age: 38
Family: Wife Sierra and sons Justice and Judah
Favorite quote: Whenever I hear something that speaks to my spirit, I jot it down; recently someone said, “I see more than I can when I look with just my eyes.” I like that. A quote that I revisit often, though, is: “I’m blessed enough to have bigger dreams, so I have to actualize them,” by Israel Adesanya.
Favorite book: Right now, my favorite nonfiction book is a tie between “The 12 Week Year” by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington and “Contagious: Why Things Catch On” by Jonah Berger. My favorite fiction book is “The Fifth Season” by N.K. Jemisin.
Personal inspiration: My family (past, present, and future)
Advice for young professionals: Young people: Be yourself, as authentically as you know how. The people, things, and opportunities that are for you will present themselves. Recognize that you don’t do anything completely on your own; be thankful and grateful for all those who have aided you. Do what you can with what you’ve got.
One summer, while staying with a health-conscious aunt in Atlanta, Cutts picked up a granola bar from the display cooler while his aunt was ordering a wheatgrass shot at a juice bar. She offered to buy him the bar, even though they’d already picked up his pizza. Cutts declined, appalled at its price tag, and he’s never forgotten his aunt’s response. “Eating healthy is expensive,” she said. “But you can pay for it now, or you can pay for it later.”
Through his work at Williams Blackstock and volunteer stints with DesignAlabama, a nonprofit that helps local leaders imagine new forms of housing, today Cutts is riffing on that lesson. Living in affordable housing shouldn’t mean residents have to sacrifice their health or their future, he says. He hopes to create a toolkit for attractive, livable, financially viable community developments where residents don’t have to choose between affordability and wellness.
Cutts envisions communities built around farming components, giving residents direct access to fresh food. “If you can combine quality housing with quality food as a central hub of a community, there’s great opportunity there,” he says.
His career goal is to create a replicable, self-sustaining housing model that not only elevates residents’ quality of life but redefines how affordable housing developments are perceived by the public, municipalities, and developers. He’s still pulling the concept together, investigating emerging materials such as mass timber and 3D-printed concrete, as well as solution-driven design concepts like Chilean
architect Alejandro Aravena’s framework for incremental housing, which gives low-income residents half of a house they can expand over time, and The Housing Laboratory, a small campus of 32 affordable housing prototypes in Apan, Mexico.
Cutts’ work with DesignAlabama has allowed him to work in half a dozen smaller towns throughout the state, getting up close and personal with the need for compassionate solutions to affordable housing. “It doesn’t matter if you’re in Birmingham, if you’re in Centerville, if you’re in Monroeville, you’re going to hear the same thing,” he says. “We need more housing, and we need better quality housing.”
His vision includes transforming the collective mindset about what home ownership looks like from one of all-or-
nothing to one of shared equity. He knows too many people who have rented for years, never missed or been late with their rent payments, helped keep up a community, and ended up with nothing to show for it. When they’re forced to move elsewhere, often because of gentrification, “they’re starting from zero, starting from scratch,” he says.
Talent Equaled by Character
Cutts knows this all too well. Growing up, he and his mother, stepfather, and sisters lived in several different cities before settling down in Huntsville, Alabama, where he was born. He felt firsthand the pain of starting over again in a new place, but the family always got by because his mother taught him and his sisters to support one another. “I hope to live up to who she wants her children to be,” Cutts says, “to honor the sacrifices that she’s made.”
He was the first person on his mom’s side of the family to graduate from college, earning a bachelor of architecture from Auburn University in 2010. As the oldest grandchild on both sides of his family, he says he has always felt obligated to set a good example for his younger sisters and cousins.
“You have an impact on others, whether you intend to or not,” he says. “As I go through life, I’m cognizant of that, and I try to make sure I act accordingly.”
That effort is felt throughout Williams Blackstock, says CEO Joel Blackstock, who describes Cutts as “a leader whose influence resonates far beyond project drawings and client meetings.”
“It’s rare to find someone whose talent is equaled by character—but Jeremy is that person,” Blackstock says. “He makes our firm better. He makes our communities stronger. And I have no doubt he will continue to shape the future of our industry for years to come.”
Cutts’ supervisor, Williams Blackstock principal Bill Segrest, says developers seek him out to help them bring housing opportunities to communities that are often overlooked and underserved. Younger architects look to him as a role model. And his work in spearheading small group design charrettes—focused, time-boxed multidisciplinary sessions held during projects’ early phases—has increased team members’ engagement by 40% and client scores for projects that use the approach by 25%.
Cutts’ wife, Sierra, tells him he’s a natural facilitator, and the charrette concept embodies what he describes as his ability to “see the forest for the trees.”
“When I’m around a group of people, and there’s a debate going on, people oftentimes don’t realize they’re talking past one another,” he says. “I’m just able to look at the situation and say, ‘Well, you’re saying this is the issue, but you’re really talking about this.’ I think of it as seeing the forest.”
The charrettes also stem from Cutts’ college days, when working in a studio culture with smaller groups of friends made collaboration easy and natural. “When a group size is more manageable, you can get more direct feedback, and the conversation that happens leads to really great results,” he says.
At Auburn, Cutts also found kindred spirits he could collaborate with to create music, his hidden passion. He taught himself to play piano in high school and began creating songs of all genres, but he never wrote them down until he found people he was comfortable with in college. Now he makes music with his sons, 7-year-old Justice and 5-year-old Judah.
In music, and in life, Cutts aspires to make steady progress a day at a time. After years of keeping his music to himself, sharing it has opened and deepened his relationships. “As I’ve grown, I’ve realized we really only get this one life to live, and you don’t know the impact you can have,” he says. “So, I’ve really pushed myself to just put things out there. And even if I don’t necessarily see it through, it might be something that sparks somebody else.”
