An existing three-story 1920s mercantile building located in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood is extensively renovated into a house that incorporates dramatic new design gestures while maintaining a respect for the original building.

Design concept and solution:
The architects inserted an expansive window wall that extrudes upward and flows over the roof to create a highly transparent penthouse. The window wall provides a connection to a private yard, a valuable asset in such a dense urban setting. The existing eastern facade of the heavy, timber-framed, brick-clad building was unstable and had to be replaced, so the architects aimed to replicate the rhythm of the existing columns on that side, while also announcing a Modernist influence at the second level. Mirroring the triangular footprint of the building, a three-story, three-sided atrium is at the heart of the home, giving way to massive timber staircases surrounded by cedar and glass. The original beams and exposed brick juxtapose the modern Arclinea kitchen, echoing the same tension between old and new that’s created by the steel-and-glass window-wall addition.