Breaking the box: with its restless geometry, fluid spaces and topographic roof, this remodelled house in suburban Chicago extends the radical, pioneering spirit of that city's architecture

Architectural Review, The, Nov, 2002 by Catherine Slessor

Of all American cities, Chicago has probably done most to secure its place in architectural history. Frank Lloyd Wright transformed America's domestic landscape and a succession of Chicago architects from Sullivan to SOM redefined the corporate skyline by building ever higher. The city was, in the words of Brian Carter and Annette LeCuyer, 'an architectural axis mundi' and a spirit of fecund invention and boundary-pushing still underscores the work of younger contemporary Chicago-based architects such as Douglas Garofalo.

Born in upstate New York, Garofalo now combines teaching and practice in Chicago and has acquired a reputation for designing and remodelling houses for a client base of successful, first generation immigrants with little affinity for traditional American domestic 'statement' architecture. Many are settled in the mature suburbs close to the city centre and, like Wright's clients over half a century earlier, want to proclaim their status with bold dwellings that often verge on the experimental. Exploiting the potential of digital technology without losing sight of the essential tectonic qualities of architecture, Garofalo fuses restless, dynamic forms and saturated colours to create a highly charged counterpoint to suburban convention. He is particularly attracted to recasting existing buildings, conceptualizing existing and new as a host-parasite relationship, looking for nuances and eccentricities in the host that will shape the parasite',* as Carter and LeCuyer note.

The Markow House is the outcome of a particularly fertile host-parasite rapport that recalls Frank Gehry's late '70s collagist forays into the suburbs (his own house -- Ar July 1980 -- was an energetic riot of angular chain link fencing and crinkly tin). The Markow's original split-level dwelling was built in 1962, with twin gables added in 1990. Financial constraints precluded building from scratch, so Garofalo was commissioned to add a 2000sq ft (185 sq m) extension. Containing enlarged communal spaces, two studies, a breakfast room and more generous bedrooms, the new part consists of three elements. A tubular structure is placed perpendicular to the two gables, an organic volume cantilevers out over the existing foundations to meet the zoning setback line and a folding metal roof cranks and undulates across the house, appearing to be pulled up and distorted by the gables below. A distant and mutated neighbour of the surrounding conventional roofs, Garofalo's topographic roofscape riffs and plays off the pa rticularities of its suburban context. External wall planes in apparently provocative hues of purple, blue, grey and yellow stand out amid the muted palette of the surroundings, but despite its formal eclecticism, the house does not look wildly out of place. Garofalo is keen to challenge the notion of suburbs as places of stifling homogeneity, instead engaging with and celebrating what he sees as their stimulating visual diversity.

The cantilevered volume contains the bedrooms, while the rectilinear tube forms a central spine, with a two-storey foyer and living room overlooked by two new study volumes at upper level. A glass catwalk links the two studies, which are placed at opposite ends of the house. Breaking with traditional domestic internal compartmentalization, spaces meld and weave fluidly around each other, anchored by an amoebic-shaped core of utility room at ground level with a sensuous mosaic-lined bathroom above. A vertical circulation route of staircase, ramp and bridge wind around the amoebic core, exploring the hierarchy of interior volumes and offering sneaky framed views of the exterior. The pervading sense is of drama, of dizzying space and light, as the orthogonal carcass of the house is playfully ruptured and slit open. It's like watching an experienced tightrope walker, who teeters thrillingly and teasingly on the brink, yet somehow you know that they aren't going to fall off.

* All American - Innovation in American Architecture, Brian Carter and Annette LeCuyer, London, 2002, Thames & Hudson, p112.

Architect

Garofalo Architects, Chicago

Project team

Douglas Garofalo, Ellen Grimes, Minkyu Whang, Randall Kober, Christopher Goode, Robert Brobson

Structural engineer

Thornton Tomasetti Engineers

Photographs

William Kildow