The Morgan Street Live + Work | Chicago | Illinois | Urbanlab

The Morgan Street project is a 3000 SF mixed-use live + work building. The first floor (1500 SF) is an office and the second floor (1500 SF) is a residence. The building is new “ground-up” construction. Prior to construction, the site was occupied by a run-down grocery store that required immediate demolition. Instead of wrecking the building and removing the debris to a suburban landfill, we choose to recycle the demo on-site and mold a gentle slope into a landscape hill. The residential loft is raised and rotated to access the crest of the prairie grass-planted recycled-materials mound, giving the second floor a direct connection to the ground. The second floor is a prefabricated structural bridge, which connects the mound and an extensive green-roof (the green-roof covers the office)..........more

Hennepin House, Hennepin, Illinois | UrbanLab

X marks the spot for a weekend house for a Chicago couple. An extremely modest budget led to the proposal of a simple box shape of 1,600 sf. Carving the box creates the main living space and links the two landscapes on the site. The hollow of the house organizes views of the forest landscape to the south and prairie landscape to the north, while the extended solid areas become the bedroom zones.

The hollow space seeks to be an interior forest/prairie room; it is wrapped in wood. The floor, ceiling, and walls of the hollow are surfaced in triangulated planes of pine. The pine wrap camouflages the private areas of the house; “secret” sliding wood panels provide access to the bedroom zones.

A perforated corrugated aluminum façade further camouflages the bedroom zones. The panels are both fixed and sliding. UrbanLab designed/built the façade: the raw aluminum sheets were acquired, a local perforation company was organized to custom-perforate the sheets, and then the sheets were corrugated with a friend’s corrugation machine. The perforated corrugated panels provide privacy, modulate light, and provide solar shading to reduce energy use in the summer.....more