A Dual Endeavor in Chicago
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Yes, we have important art and furniture, but no, we don't want our new home to look like a museum." Architects and interior designers who serve clients with major collections are, from time to time, just so instructed and do their best to deal with what can often be an essentially contradictory, and thereby difficult to satisfy, mandate. Occasionally, however, such designers get lucky. Architects Stanley Tigerman and his wife and partner, Margaret McCurry, have completed an apartment in a Chicago high-rise for Matthew and Kay Bucksbaum, a couple who knew from the start that they wanted a museum-type environment for the old and new masters, antiquities and modern crafts they had acquired over the years. For the Bucksbaums, the organization of the collection was as important as the arrangement of the spaces that would contain it. "Stanley and Margaret both came to our former home to see what we had and to help us decide what to do about it," says Kay Bucksbaum. The architects suggested ways that the works might be pruned and put together to allow the interiors to be spacious, uncluttered and serene.
The Bucksbaums had purchased and combined two adjoining apartments that together made up 5,800 square feet of space, which they decided to gut completely. The result was to provide a series of rooms for the couple and a guest suite that could be converted for future live-in help, with spaces for the families of their daughter and son that could also be used for entertaining. A pantry, a wine cellar, a darkroom and a study were ingeniously tucked in as well. It was the couple's decision to make their new apartment a museum-like home, however, that shaped its design and defines its spirit.
The living room, dining room and kitchen tables, designed by Tigerman, join the craft traditions of the collection by being unique in concept.
The architects chose a plan similar to that of a traditional museum's, with rooms arranged axially. But their work by no means ended there. Notes Tigerman, "We did absolutely everything, from devising the display systems to designing the fittings in the closets. We framed the art, placed it and hung it." Much of the carefully detailed interior structure was done with the assistance of project managers Lisa Kulisek and Melany Telleen. The living room, dining room and kitchen tables, five in all, designed by Tigerman, join the craft traditions of the collection by being unique in concept. All furniture was selected to be consistently simple and modern in form, in contrast with the variety and lively juxtaposition of an eclectic assembly of objects.
Two playful works in the entrance hall first signal the character, discernment and importance of the Bucksbaum acquisitions: a little painting by Joan Miró and a surrealistically deformed chair by contemporary craftsman Jon Brooks. A short corridor from the hall leads directly to the living room on the southwest corner. It is the primary gathering place for the family and guests and is distinguished by major pieces from the collection, among which are a group of tribal masks, a Henry Moore sculpture, a painting by Anselm Keifer and a piano decorated with a pattern of inlaid aspen leaves by craftsman Silas Kopf. This large and grand room serves as the terminus of two cross axes, one enfilade flowing north through the dining room and kitchen to the family room on the northwest corner, the other running eastward through the library and study and culminating in the master bedroom.
"In response to the size of the apartment and the intricacy of its arrangements of space," McCurry remarks, "our imposition of axiality makes it immediately clear where one is going and provides something of note—a view, an object, a bedroom at the end of the journey." As Tigerman, ever reaching for larger and deeper meanings, puts it: "Axiality prevails as an important architectural element that reinforces the Neoclassical ideal of man as the center of the universe." Because the Bucksbaums love Japanese architecture and associate axiality with serenity, each of the enfilade openings, as well as all other doorways in the apartment, are enclosed by beautifully detailed shojilike steel-and-glass sliding doors.
Throughout the apartment, the architects' elegant method of concealing the air-conditioning, fire protection and stereo systems is plainly visible. It consists of a continuous, narrow, stamped-aluminum grille placed high on the walls—all but the window walls, to avoid interrupting the splendid views to the north, west and south. To establish a strong sense of architectural rhythm for the window walls, they clad the window frames and sills in bronze-colored aluminum to match the existing mullions, thereby reinforcing the alternating pattern of window and solid plastered surface. This cladding, by emphasizing the vertical, also makes the adjoining spaces seem higher.
"Axiality reinforces the Neoclassical ideal of man as the center of the universe."
The hundreds of artworks and craft objects in the apartment were expertly illuminated by lighting designer Sylvan R. Shemitz, with his associate David Pfund, the principal designer, using handsome, unobtrusive fixtures. For the living and family rooms, the architects conceived suspended lighting tracks, with tiny downlights, that circumscribe the ceilings. The terrazzo floors have circular stainless-steel inlays to match, and one of Tigerman's designs, a glass table in the living room, follows the curves above and below.
Tigerman and McCurry generally don't work together unless a client specifically requests it, and as it turned out, the size and complexity of the job demanded the very best of the two of them. The clients were dedicated to the project and participated in every choice. Matthew Bucksbaum admits, "I lost every battle with Stanley, but I'm glad he won them, because in the finished work in each instance I can see that he was right and I was wrong." Kay Bucksbaum adds, "Stanley's sudden flashes of intuitive brilliance were really fun for me. I was helped so much by Margaret's taste and admired her stick-to-it-iveness in solving every problem we faced." Tigerman, as he often does, gives all the credit to McCurry. "I did the tables, but anything else that looks beautiful is because of her."