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It is easy to typecast Chicago as the Midwestern City of Big Shoulders that had (past tense) a major influence on the planning of the modern metropolis and the development of tall buildings. In the architecture profession, Chicago is known for large, prominent firms with storied histories, including Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Holabird & Root, which helped to shape it. But who are emerging as the new architectural talents for an evolving Chicago? RECORD found a handful of extraordinary young Chicago designers who are forging ahead in directions that a young architect may not have thought possible even a generation ago.
Starting a new architectural practice in Chicago can be daunting, considering the architectural history of the city and the pedigree of some of its most well-established firms. But for Darryl Crosby and Melinda Palmore—Chicago natives and friends since meeting in architecture school in the mid-1980s—starting their own firm as African-Americans in a predominantly white profession was an even greater challenge. They began 3D Design Studio in 1997 and now have two employees, a few competition wins, and a growing list of high-profile clients. “It’s difficult to move up in the structure if you’re not white,” Palmore says. “But we had the requisite talent and courage to start our own firm.” Palmore and Crosby met at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Architecture, and both gained valuable experience in the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where Palmore worked on the design for London’s Canary Wharf. Crosby got his start working for his professor, Stanley Tigerman, FAIA, at Tigerman McCurry Architects while still in school. “Darryl’s work is clear, clean, direct, and still innovative,” says Tigerman. Crosby and Palmore began their own firm with
a commission for administrative office renovations and a new outdoor
terrace for Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. A number
of competition entries also fueled their creative spark before the
firm won the Universal and Affordable House Competition, sponsored
by the City of Chicago in 2002, for universally accessible and adaptable
housing. Their design for three prototypes—all based on 12-by-36-foot
modules—clearly distinguish living, circulation, and service
spaces both in plan and through distinctive colors on both the interior
and exterior. Now the team is designing Neither Sarah Dunn nor Martin Felsen is originally from Chicago, but as architects, they were attracted to the city because “it seemed like a place where you could build,” says Dunn. Dunn met Felsen while both were earning master’s degrees at Columbia University in New York in the early 1990s. She went on to three years at Rem Koolhaas’s Office for Metropolitan Architecture in Rotterdam, where she was project architect for the IIT McCormick Tribune Campus Center in Chicago. Felsen, meanwhile, came to Chicago to teach at the IIT School of Architecture, while Dunn joined him in Chicago and, since 1999, has taught at UIC. Together, they have had their own practice, UrbanLab, in a home-office storefront in the gentrified Pilsen neighborhood. UrbanLab’s work has been in a number of exhibitions, but its first major showing was the design of a prototypical bus shelter for the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Material Evidence: Chicago Architecture at 2000 show in 1999. The shelter had a GPS/GIS system embedded in the structure that would inform transit passengers of the geographical position and arrival time of buses. The firm won the 2003 Emerging Visions Competition, a portfolio competition sponsored by the Chicago Architectural Club, AIA Chicago, and Knoll, and its first significant built project is a design-build venture: a new home-office for themselves. Located a few blocks south of their current storefront, the new home has a front office loft clad in Cor-Ten steel and a rear residential loft clad in aluminum. Both are built next to and above a grassy mound composed of the demolition debris from the run-down grocery store that was previously on the site. “Instead of wrecking the building and removing the debris to a suburban landfill, we choose to recycle the demo on-site and mold it into a mound,” says Felsen. “Chicago has a culture where people care about architecture,” he adds, although he acknowledges that UrbanLab’s start—with theoretical projects, exhibitions, and com- petition entries—is an anomaly in Chicago, where “the norm is to work for a larger firm and then go on your own with clients that you had worked for.” Last month, UrbanLab was a finalist in a competition to design the Ford Calumet Environmental Center, a new environmental facility for Chicago’s far South Side. The firm’s design calls for the building itself to work with the ecosystem to actually help clean the polluted industrial site, with a wetland on the roof. Daylight will be integrated throughout the structure, which will include exhibition space, classrooms, and laboratories for environmental education. A competition winner was to be named in late April, and other finalists included the experienced Carol Ross Barney, FAIA; Jeanne Gang, AIA; a Japanese architecture student; and recent architecture school graduates Brian Strawn and Karla Sierralta. Strawn and Sierralta both graduated from the UIC School of Architecture in May 2003. While dating and beginning their careers with different firms (Strawn with Vinci Hamp Architects and Sierralta with Norsman Architects), together they have had a remarkable first year out of school. They’ve been named finalists in two high-profile competitions: for the World Trade Center Memorial in New York and the Ford Calumet Environmental Center. Strawn, who grew up in Alexander, Illinois, and Sierralta, who is originally from Maracaibo, Venezuela, met while at UIC, but they had never worked on a project before deciding to develop an entry for the WTC Memorial Competition. To their surprise, they were selected as one of the eight finalists for their entry, called Dual Memory, which called for 2,982 light portals over the footprint of the North Tower and 92 Sugar Maples at the site of the former South Tower (rendering, bottom left). Once named finalists, Strawn and Sierralta refined their scheme on a computer at Strawn’s apartment. In their imaginative entry for their next competition—the Environmental Center—Strawn and Sierralta incorporated remnants of Chicago past, including recycled car hoods, perforated train-car panels, and reclaimed telephone poles in the skin of their building design. In suburban Illinois, Randall Deutsch, AIA, grew up dreaming of being an architect “from day one.” At 42, he is still young for architecture, but he is no newcomer to the Chicago scene. Prior to starting his own firm, Deutschwrx, in 2000, he had already worked as an associate with Lohan Associates and then with Jordan Mozer and Associates, both in Chicago. As a senior designer at Lucien Lagrange Architects, also in Chicago, he worked on more than 40 projects, including the new 840 N. Lake Shore Drive luxury tower, and 175 West Jackson, Chicago’s fifth-largest office building. For such efforts he was awarded the 1999 AIA Young Architect Award for Chicago. Since establishing Deutschwrx, based in Winnetka, Deutsch’s work has been smaller in scale, but still inventive. It includes commercial, residential, and religious projects. More radical designs include a proposed Pedway (pedestrian walkway) entry pavilion made of glass and steel for downtown Chicago’s Brunswick Plaza that fits comfortably within the straight lines of the nearby buildings and complements the curving Miro sculpture standing beside it. Another project is a residential unit in 840 N. Lake Shore Drive inspired by the client’s admiration for the Picasso painting called The Dream. Based on the painting, the spaces are divided into conscious (public) areas and unconscious (private) ones. “Starting on your own helps you not only set the project types, but also really allows you to get your hands around a project,” Deutsch says. The demand for sustainability in all aspects of design, from interiors to furnishings, is part of what drove Jill Salisbury to start her company, EL: Environmental Language (www.el-furniture.com), last year. An interior designer by training, Salisbury was interior design manager for Torchia Associates in Chicago and saw a need for furnishings that were manufactured of green or ecologically friendly materials. She left the firm in 2001 and, with environmental consultant Paul Clark of Eugene, Oregon, started researching materials and developing conceptual designs for high-end biodegradable home furnishings. Her first line, constructed by two manufacturers in Chicago, debuted last fall. From her home in suburban Barrington, Salisbury designs her furniture line, which has 20 initial pieces, including sofas, chairs, beds, and tables that are made with natural or nontoxic materials and manufactured with nontoxic processes. All of the fabrics, including wool, organic cotton, and hemp, are free of chemicals. Rubber latex is used for cushions, and leathers are chromium-free. Only domestic hardwoods such as walnut or maple from certified sustainable forests are used, rather than wood from clear-cut forests. Bamboo, which is renewable, and palm wood from a coconut tree plantation in Hawaii are both in a variety of pieces. Salisbury seems most excited when describing her use of the meat of the tagua nut from Ecuador, which she employs as an inlay in handles of pieces on her Zen collection. As she says, “It’s the size of a plum and looks exactly like ivory.” Environmental Language is focusing on the Chicago area market initially, but Salisbury plans to have a greater presence on the West Coast within a year. Salisbury and the other young designers making a difference in Chicago are changing the city’s built environment by taking the road less traveled. Though, as Strawn and Sierralta showed with their World Trade Center Memorial entry, the impact of their design talents can be far-reaching. Says Deutsch, “It’s worthwhile knowing there are all these start-up firms that have taken chances and done some great things. It’s very healthy for Chicago.”
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