Lincoln Park House

2017 Residential Architect Design Awards
Custom Home More Than 3,000 Square Feet | Citation

Local firm HBRA Architects drew on a wide range of historic precedents for its 7,011-square-foot Lincoln Park House in Chicago. But while the designers invoke Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Charnley-Persky House and H.H. Richardson’s Glessner House, the result displays few explicit historic references. “It’s trying to be modern and traditional at the same time—and pulling it off,” R. Michael Graham said. In fact, the façades seem timeless, with highly figured stone inset panels and an asymmetrical array of windows set within an abstract masonry grid.

The primary living spaces are on the second floor, where they overlook a shared semi-private park built atop a parking deck that serves the house and its neighbors. The need to provide efficient—and immediate—vertical access to the piano nobile led the architects to design a memorable skylit central stair that links the four levels of the home and distributes daylight throughout. The kitchen faces the street, while the expansive dining and living room open to the park. Third-floor bedrooms are topped by a fourth-floor solarium that opens to two rooftop living spaces, including a kitchen garden that provides fresh food for the family.

A simple interior palette of light stone and wood floors with bright white walls and ceilings establishes what the architects call “a non-historical expressive language” that seems both modern and vernacular. While solving the constraints associated with the classic double-party-wall townhouse typology, the designers have drawn on a sophisticated use of space, including extensions into the exterior at the second and fourth levels, to create a home that seems more like a freestanding single-family residence. —Edward Keegan, AIA

Visit ARCHITECT to see the rest of the winners of the 2017 Residential Architect Design Awards.

From ARCHITECT's March 2017 issue:

The clients for a new single-family house in Chicago’s Lincoln Park—a couple with two young children—were both trained as architects, and their experience proved to be both an asset and a challenge for local firm HBRA Architects. “They had a real aversion to precedent,” says Aric Lasher, FAIA, the firm’s director of design. While the clients’ backgrounds allowed them to articulate their concerns, the two were locked in what they thought were conflicting aesthetic goals: The husband preferred a vernacular approach, while the wife was interested in contemporary Modernism. However, “I’ve always thought there was a simple relationship between the vernacular and modern,” Lasher says. “The two are not exclusive.”

The house’s simple plan is efficient, with a central hall and stairway topped by a skylight and living spaces located on the northwest and southeast sides to maximize natural light. Interstitial zones hold services, including a second means of egress (condensed as a spiral stair behind closed doors), and storage. Common spaces are clustered on the second floor, with a living room that opens onto a small private backyard and a semi-private park that’s shared with the neighboring townhouses and a related high-rise. The third floor contains the house’s four bedrooms. Two outdoor rooms defined by the core and party walls comprise most of the fourth floor: The front northwest-facing room features a kitchen garden while the rear southeast-facing outdoor room is a living space with a fireplace.

The palette is constrained, balancing the interests of the clients and the architect in expressing both vernacular and modern touches. Travertine tile floors, white plaster walls, and oak doors and stairs provide most of the interior material interest. On the exterior, the challenge was how to be a good neighbor to the rest of the development, which is a new series of traditional-style townhouses spanning half a block. The architect’s answer lay in gridded masonry that gives a material sense of the bearing wall’s construction with a bit of abstract expression of the traditional Venetian palazzo—a typology that famously balances symmetries with asymmetries. “I don’t like the approach of randomness,” Lasher says. “I believe there can be a liveliness to formalism.” The post-and-lintel system utilizes buff-colored Minnesota dolomitic limestone. Metal-clad wood windows alternate with infill sandstone panels, whose natural graining and patterning brings variation to the façade.

While discussion of precedent with the clients was verboten, Lasher still managed to incorporate references to architectural history within the house’s seemingly simple exterior and interiors. —Edward Keegan, AIA

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Project Credits
Project: Lincoln Park House, Chicago
Client: Withheld
Architect: HBRA Architects, Chicago . Aric Lasher, FAIA (director of design and principal-in-charge); Gary Ainge, FAIA (administrative principal); Adam Tomski (project manager); William Mahalko, Jeff Policky (project team)
M/E/P Engineer: GeoSolar Energy Farm
Structural Engineer: Goodfriend Magruder Structure
General Contractor: LG Construction
Landscape Designer and Green Roof Consultant: Intrinsic Landscaping
Lighting Designer: Anne Kustner Lighting Design
Exterior Envelope: Wiss Janney Elstner Associates
Home Automation: Connecteriors
Size: 7,011 square feet (includes 875-square-foot garage)
Cost: Withheld