Glass enclosed stair to 2nd Floor and Basement with Entry Foyer to the right and Entertainment Courtyard to the left

Living/Dining/Kitchen Space viewed from Kitchen with adjacent Entertainment Courtyard to the left

As most architects who own businesses know, a small number of projects that come into their offices actually get built. We take drawings to certain level and then whether it is budget, the clients getting divorced, their job is relocated, they get sued for insider trading (it happened!), the soils conditions on the site are bad, the economy plunged into recession, or the World Trade Center gets attacked by terrorists, it happens time and again. Most, but not all of the reasons are outside our control. Anecdotally, between 10-20% of projects that come into our office actually get built. As an Architect friend of mine calls it, “the trail of broken dreams.” There are many projects that never see the light of day, and many of them are well designed. Some projects envisioned for here in Chicago including Eliel Saarinen’s Chicago Tribune Tower Competition Entry in 1922 and Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Mile High Tower”, The Illinois in 1956, and more recently, Santiago Calatrava’s “Chicago Spire” in 2005. Not that our house design is anywhere near the ambition exhibited in these projects, but I think the brethren of us architects all suffer the same frustration over our careers.

Shown is our preliminary design for a new single family home in a suburban community on the North Shore of Chicago. Our client, who possesses a long and narrow lot, similar to the property for our 4 unit attached single family, HP Modern project, which has garnered several design awards.

The design for the subject house has an exterior palette of Stucco, Board Formed Concrete, Composite Siding, Perforated Metal Fencing and Gates. Parking for visitors is provided at the front of the house. Owner vehicular access is provided via a access road on the side of the building out view from the street. The visitors approach from the street to the front door provides a covered entry porch. The combination of materials break up the massing of structure and provides scale in context of the surrounding houses. It is much larger than anything else in the neighborhood and over 6,000 sf plus a full basement

As it turned out, I was the one that suggested that the client not build a house of this magnitude in the area where it is surrounded by houses of much lesser value. As an architect friend of mine likes to tell his clients who are planning their “dream house” and bring up the ultimate conversation of “will we get what we put into it back when we go to sell it, '“he replies, “Remember, its your dream house, not somebody else’s”.

Peter Nicholas
peter@nicholasdc.com