WKA Urban Residences II

Wheeler Kearns Architects Urban Residences II

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Founded in 1987, we have over thirty years of experience with visioning and master-planning, renovation, adaptive reuse, and new construction projects for residential, institutional, commercial, and community-driven organizations. Our work spans from alternative affordable housing models to multi-family mid-rise structures; from community food pantries to innovative visual and performing arts venues. We are drawn to complex design problems and constraints that challenge us to create unique, responsive, and inspiring solutions.

In our practice, every architect proactively trains across multiple project types ensuring that the breadth of experience and institutional knowledge built over time enriches each project. We build our teams to include individuals with a range of experiences and knowledge to avoid any preconceived notions about your project and ensure fresh ideas and continuous innovation.

We are a diverse group of thinkers and designers who equally share in the roles of designer, technician and manager. Each project architect is fully immersed in your project, from the very first conversation through move-in and evaluating the success of your space after it is occupied. We have been fortunate to cultivate long-lasting relationships with many of our clients.

Through office-wide studio pin-ups and internal reviews, all staff members contribute ideas and feedback to every project to provide the best ideas and highest quality work. This philosophy offers a wider spectrum of possibility and has led to unanticipated solutions, like transforming a shuttered lumberyard into an innovative 21st-century school. Or discovering that the 70-foot tower of an abandoned food-manufacturing plant can be a viable and exciting gallery and performance space. Our approach ensures that the best ideas will be explored for each unique project.

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Wheeler Kearns is a collective practice of architects.

We work with people who seek to enrich their lives in spaces that embody their purpose, energy, and vision.

We want to see your challenge through your eyes. Doing this guides us to what we call the “emotional center,” the heart around which your entire project revolves. We return to that central idea as we craft concepts, help you make decisions, and refine our responses to those choices.

The result is a space that responds uniquely to your mission. When a client contacts us years after a project is complete to let us know they’re “just sitting here experiencing beyond-expectations contentment,” we know we’ve gotten it right.

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When a space we design resonates with your deepest intention, it has a lasting and powerful impact. As we work with you, we devote all our energies to understanding your core purpose, the transformation you seek, your mission.

Wheeler Kearns Architects was named AIA Chicago Firm of the Year in 1996 and 2016. Our office is located in the Fisher Building at 343 S. Dearborn St., Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60604.

Year Completed 2014 Location Chicago, MI Photography Steve Hall - Hedrich Blessing

Wicker Park Residence

Located on a unique double lot site in Chicago’s Wicker Park Landmark District, the project entails a contemporary interpretation of traditional materials and detailing in order to preserve and contribute to the historic neighborhood. From the street, a formal masonry facade features large punched openings of dark metal windows and doors and wraps the two-story residence. This heavy masonry shell is carved away at the rear, revealing a garden, glass facade and a contemporary, lightfilled interior. The new house connects to a historic masonry coachhouse structure via a one-story glass enclosed link.

A central service core contains a powder room, butler’s pantry and storage on the first floor, and laundry and mechanical spaces on the second floor. Two large millwork volumes flank the north and south walls to conceal the stairways up to secondfloor private spaces.

Reflecting the architectural concept, the interior program is divided behind the formal front (entry, dining and living) and an informal rear (kitchen and family room).

The interior palette is bright and clean, a blank canvas where art and eclectic furnishings are the focus. White walls, acoustic plaster ceiling, and epoxy terrazzo flooring define the interior space and reinforce a sense of openness for the large gatherings that often take place. Custom floor-toceiling metal book shelves, which line the front and rear of the first-floor center core, embrace the client’s distinctive collection of whimsical objects, books, pictures, and art.

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Year Completed 2015 Location Chicago, IL

Photography Steve Hall - Hedrich Blessing

Gold Coast Residence

Located on a landmark city block in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, the project entails the renovation and de-conversion of a brick masonry residence and basement apartment into a singlefamily residence for a young urban family. The primary objective of the project was to draw natural light into the confines of a lot-line to lot-line building, on a dense city block with a mix of high and low-rise buildings.

Before the renovation, the long and narrow structure—mostly adjoined to its neighbors on both sides—was notable for limited windows, a traditional layout with many separate dark and small rooms. Access to the only exterior living space was indirect and difficult.

A one-and-a-half story glass “conservatory” intervention in the rear serves as a vertical connector between the existing split-level house and garage/roofdeck. The link provides direct access between indoor and new outdoor spaces, and acts as the primary source for southern exposure daylight, a luxury in the city. Nearly all of the existing interior walls were removed, opening up the spaces and allowing daylight to flood the interior from front to back.

The site constraints also limited exterior spaces, which had felt exposed to the high rises behind the house. A new trellis spans the entire width of the primary exterior patio to help define an exterior room and provide privacy and screening from neighboring buildings.

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Chicago Residence

Year Completed 2019 Location Chicago, IL

The Chicago Residence is a new city home designed to host multi-generational family members from across the country together in one place. Spanning two city lots, the five-story home is conceived as a solid mass that layers and carves out space to capture daylight and create unique environments for living. The home is clad in Black Swell granite, selected for its striking veining and visual texture, providing a sense of depth and movement, and contrasting to the traditional brick and limestone facades in the neighborhood.

Single and double-height spaces work in unison to achieve the owner’s desires for openness and intimacy. At the center, a staircase ascends upwards like a steel ribbon, connecting the first four levels which include spaces for entertaining, sleeping, living and dining, and two terraces.

A spiral stair reaches to the top floor, which includes an office and spa that opens to a calming Japanese-inspired terrace. Interior glass partitions filter daylight deep into the home while also providing views and connection between floors.

The home is designed to display a significant art collection, as the owners are collectors and board members of pre-eminent art institutions. Materials such as travertine, walnut, and bronze provide warmth and texture, as well as a neutral palette for art of all media to stand out.

Designed for elegance, intimacy, and entertaining, this Chicago Residence seamlessly flows together, creatively linking and interconnecting spaces, both visually and physically, to keep family togetherness at its core.

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Photography Richard Powers