This attached, masonry row house sits on an eighteen-foot wide lot in Chicago’s Grand Crossing, a neighborhood notable for its rapid genesis from an open field into a dense, beautiful upper-middle-class neighborhood in the 1880s. Luxurious and new at the time of the nearby Columbian Exposition, the building, four decades later, was crudely divided into apartments during the Great Depression. A contractor recently restored its single occupancy but cut the rear of the building off from light and air. In his defense, the rear yard was not much to look at: a gravel and dirt pad. We set out to create an inside/outside space employing effects with light, color and material that would create a volume for family, community and mindfulness.

Structure, sustainability and material all work together to create a coherent and compelling, integrated whole. For instance, the light shelf is a device used to reflect light deep into the interior. It is also used as a gusset to brace the steel frame of the addition. The light shelf’s clerestory window slides open and allows lake breezes to ventilate the room.

The room is bathed by even, indirect illumination. Top and bottom coves conceal energy efficient fluorescent fixtures. A bottom cove light runs through the glass creating a unified volume. A bench made of quartz straddles the glass on the other side of room further reinforcing the inside/outside nature of the space.

We call this small-batch space the LightBox.