Chicago, Illinois, USA
After working through several housing competitions that tested new values for living, Kwong Von Glinow wanted to bring those values to a built reality. Rather than waiting for potential clients, they decided to put those learned values to the test in their own development project.
Ardmore House is not designed for one specific client, but the goal is to rethink housing’s future by considering how the next generation of homebuyers wants to live.
Built on a residential lot at the intersection of a street and an alley in Chicago, the Armour House is a three-level building designed to enhance the quality of living in relation to a renewed condition of brightness, fluidity and space flexibility.
Inverted with respect to the classic division between the living area on the lower level and the bedrooms upstairs, the floors find a common front of containment in an internal double-height wall, gently curved, which outlines a shield enhancing the passage of air and light between the floors and yet protecting the view of the bedrooms, which face the private garden and the outer perimeter walls.
On the second floor, reached by an internal ramp, a large open space is marked by the scenic presence of cladded trusses that mark the transition between the kitchen area, dining room and living room. Invaded by the light coming from the ribbon windows, the space opens to the neighborhood and to all those details – the vegetation, the brick houses, the many suspended electric cables – that identify its unpretentious charm.
Inside as well as outside, the use of cladding contributes to building a link with the vernacular architectural typology prevalent in the block, while at the same time sublimating it through the combination of finishes.
On the façade, where the arrangement of windows is an explicit reference to the idea of privacy embodied by the building – on the street front, the floor of the rooms has no openings to the outside except for a large glass door – the concrete base is enriched by two Accoya wood bands, the first in light gray and the other in black that lines the iconic silhouette of the roof, emphasizing its iconicity.
Kwong Von Glinow Ardmore House
Architects: Kwong Von Glinow
Client: Kwong Von Glinow
Photographers: James Florio
