Bronzeville Artist Lofts

Taking a cue from Chicago’s vibrant cultural past, a local Alderwoman spearheaded this project to convert a vacant and severely dilapidated century-old building into an affordable live/work space for local artists. The result is a beautiful new facility with dramatic open spaces and exposed, floor-to-ceiling timber. The design was driven by the building’s unusual structure; it was framed more like a bridge than a typical building to create open space needed by the original tenant—Borden’s Dairy. The first floor houses a shared workshop, commercial art gallery and tenant space, while the second and third floors include lofts, gallery space and communal seating areas. The second and third floor structure consists of light wood framing. To maintain an open first-floor plan, second floor framing is suspended from the bottom chord of the trusses with iron rods, and third-floor framing occupies the space between the trusses’ top and bottom chords. To reduce noise associated with artists making work, sound insulation was added to the wood floor cavities. The bold choice to renovate this building, rather than demolish it, exemplifies the value of preserving the existing urban fabric of cities through the adaptive reuse of significant neighborhood structures. 33,614 sf / Type IIIB Construction