GCD Architects

GCD Architects is a one-person Cambridge practice run by Adam J. Glassman, a Massachusetts registered architect. The firm's own site keeps it simple — it says it works with clients to bring a project in on time and on budget — and BBB records it as a sole proprietorship trading since September 2017 with a single employee. The substance of the record is in the permit history rather than in customer feedback. Thirteen permitted projects sit under Glassman's name, and they are not small: gut renovations of Somerville two- and three-family houses, a Needham Heights house demolished to its foundation and rebuilt with a new second level at just over $1.14 million, a full Somerville gut with a raised roof at $461,500, and a Milton job pulling out four load-bearing walls for steel beams. One Needham permit names the firm directly — the plans are filed as being by GCD Architects — which is what ties the personal licence record to the practice. BuildZoom scores him 96, placing him in the top twenty percent of Massachusetts licensed contractors. What homeowners have said is thin and old. The one written review, from January 2017, described him drawing dormers, sitting through two variance hearings to get the permit, and sending revised plans in the middle of the night — a picture of an architect who does the permitting legwork himself. A Cambridge commenter passed his name along in 2021. The reason the rating sits where it does is a 2024 comment in the same Cambridge thread. Replying to that recommendation, someone wrote three words: he loves kickbacks. Nothing supports it and nothing rebuts it — there is no detail, no project, and no complaint on file at BBB, which grades the firm A+. It is one anonymous line, and it should be read as exactly that, but it is the kind of allegation worth raising directly. If you are planning a substantial Cambridge or Somerville renovation and want an architect who will personally carry a variance through a zoning board, the permit record supports that. Ask him about how contractors are selected and paid on his projects, and confirm his registration is current with the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Architects before you sign.