Born Modern (continued)
In Chicago, architect Geoffrey Goldberg and arts administrator Lynne Remington turned an early 20th-century triplex into a home suitable for their midcentury possessions and 21st-century lifestyle.
The couple had such precise ideas about the renovation that “we began the demo immediately, and started design and construction simultaneously,” says Goldberg. Within weeks, they came to a crashing halt. “We found far more serious structural issues than we anticipated,” Goldberg admits. Inadequate load-bearing walls required extensive structural reinforcement.
On the positive side, the stronger walls provided much greater flexibility. “We were able to create a double-height living room like the one in my grandmother’s home,” says Goldberg (his grandmother being noted abstract sculptor Lillian Florsheim). Furthermore, he was able “to cut two open stairwells through the building and rebuild the back with much larger windows than we ever expected.” One of those stairwells has translucent walls for the free flow of light between the stairway and the living rooms.
To site the rooms, a close friend, the late Julie Thoma Wright, “advised us to visit the spaces at different times of the day. It made me realize I didn’t really like being on the first floor,” says Remington, so they devoted the ground floor to her studio, Goldberg’s office, a working library and a guest suite; the second to public living areas; the third to sleeping quarters.
Remington, a passionate gardener, always planned to plant vegetables in the yard, but she never expected it to be in a plot on a sleek rooftop deck. “When we decided to put the family room at the back of the house, Geoff realized I could walk out from the kitchen and pick fresh tomatoes if there was an extension bridge, so he designed one,” she says. They also grow cabbage, carrots, beans and herbs; Nathan, now 11, does all the planting.
The double-height living room overlooks the garden, and has soaring windows that infuse the center of the home with light. But Goldberg believes “too much direct light is overwhelming,” so he used frosted glass on a corner window bank and another that spans the bi-level space in the living room.
Placing their furnishings and art in the large, open spaces on the second floor would have been daunting without help from Wright, “who made thumbnail sketches of where things should go,” explains Goldberg. She also helped them pick a few new pieces and gave them invaluable color advice.
The project took three years—twice as long as the couple anticipated. “We didn’t set any speed records,” quips Goldberg, “but we got it right.” Indeed they did; in November 2007 the home won top honors for interior architecture from the Chicago chapter of the American Institute of Architects.
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