PORTFOLIO: NEIL FRANKEL (CHICAGO RESIDENCE LIVING/STUDIO/WORK CENTER)

Neil Frankel, AIA : The SOM v.p./design principal's Chicago residence,
co-designed with his wife Cindy Coleman to serve their living and business needs

Lower-level seating area on elevated
platform. Caster-supported drawers
under step-up slide out for use elsewhere.
Painting is by Terrance La Noue.

Even before he moved from a beach cottage in Indiana to a two-
story loft in Chicago, Neil Frankel, favored wide open spaces for his habitats. In this location - an 1864 commercial building in the Windy City's historic printers' district, converted to residential status in 1979 -
he began by renting, thereafter buying, a full floor. Five years later
he acquired the level immediately above, giving the couple a 3,200-sq.-ft. penthouse duplex subsequently transmuted by them into a living/working domicile.

In explaining the overall design approach, Frankel reveals that for
him and his wife, "home" does not mean cosy-comfy hideaway.
Instead it is the locale for experimentation and laboratory for ideas execution, a super size studio/office extension where they continue
to practice their trade at all hours and days of the week.

Function allocations, such as they are, are suggested by an 18-in.-
raised platform elevation and millwork placement. Frankel and his
wife believe that space should be flexible and totally responsive to
evolutionary change, that it should be "reductive" so that something
always can be taken away to make room for something else.
Their extensive art collection, for example, is constantly rotated;
paintings, not confined to suspension from walls, may be propped
on coat pegs fronting swing-back doors to a closet..

A 16-ft.-long bench doubles as flat file. Three 20-ft.-long/15-ft.-deep
drawers on casters slide under the platform and can be wheeled across
the floor. This is not to say that laissez-faire is the rule of the way.
There is, instead, an implied sense of organization, verbalized by Frankel
as the "connectivity between the two floors." It is expressed most
strongly by the levels-linking stairs and double-height reference library,
both set in a milieu uninterrupted by static partitions. Subway grating, used as transitional material between components of varying heights, appears on stair treads, landing surrounds and bridge.

Last in the series of oneness producers is the "typology" or "clarity of intent" principle, the spokesman's label for consistency and simplification of design. Thus all seating, including the bed, is covered with black leather; horizontal counters are of black laminate; walls are white; and floors are of maple. MONICA GERAN ( Plan of Residence 1 )

Seating: Atelier International; Knoll Upholstery Materials: Spinneybeck (leather)Atelier Int'l (fabrics) Custom Desk: Parenti & Raffaelli Tables: Atelier; Interna Custom Storage/filling/shelving: Meilach Woodwork Midwest; Parenti & Raffaelli; Imperial Woodwork; LaSalle Glass. Lighting: Lightolier; Artemide.

Meeting center and work area with 6-ft. table.

Round-table meeting center and
work area with 6-ft.-sq. table.