Luxe Magazine
Chicago Edition, Winter 2010
download pdf

Interior Design
Steve Kadlec, Kadlec Architecture + Design

Architect
Joe Sperti, Booth Hansen

Developer
Draper and Kramer

Bedrooms 3, Bathrooms 4, Square Feet 3,700

written by Lisa Skolnik
photography by Tony Soluri

Instant Gratification
Imagine finding the home of your dreams, then only having half-an-hour to make any modifications to the developer’s plans for the place. “It was crazy,” laughs a woman who experienced just that when she bought an apartment in Chicago’s historic Palmolive building. At the time, she was relocating here from Ohio to be near her adult children, and heard that the legendary 1929 Art Deco, Holabird & Root-designed headquarters of Colgate-Palmolive (and later Playboy) was going condo. But construction was so far along that the floor plan could not be changed, and “I had to pick out colors, cabinets and finishes on the spot because the developer was on such a tight deadline.”

Still, snagging the place was a coup. “I got the last unit with a terrace,” she says triumphantly, though the term hardly seems appropriate for the sprawling sweep that skirts the unit on three sides and is larger than many backyards. In fact, it was the feature that was most responsible for the Chicago developer Draper and Kramer’s inability to alter the home’s layout.

Every unit in the building is custom designed, and this one was particularly challenging because the structure steps back at this level. That left a deep space outside for a terrace, but the inside spaces were shallow because they wrapped around the elevator banks and mechanical core,” explains Joe Sperti, one of the architects who headed the project’s design team for Chicago-based Booth Hansen. Fortunately, the city allowed the developer to build an addition on the landmark-protected structure at this level alone, which gave the unit a commodious 760-square foot living room and reduced the terrace to a still-spacious 2,600 square feet.

The homeowner, who still had to sell her Ohio residence and deal with all of its contents, quickly realized she needed a local collaborator to refine the interiors and help her decide what to keep, sell or buy. After interviewing five firms referred by the developer and acquaintances, she hired Steve Kadlec, principal of Kadlec Architecture + Design in Chicago. “I liked him because of his organized approach and sophisticated aesthetic. But I really knew he was the right person when he came to see my home in Ohio and I said, ‘What if I want to reuse everything I have here in Chicago?’ He said ‘We’ll make it work,’ without any hesitation. He’s easy to work with and accommodating,” she observes.

As an architect and interior designer, Kadlec also has a multi-faceted skill set that enabled him to come up with small structural changes that did not compromise the developer’s plans, yet made a big impact on the way the apartment looked and lived. In the foyer, for example, several closets for storage and mechanicals made the prominent space confusing and choppy rather than welcoming and straightforward, so Kadlec masked the jumble of doors with sleek, hidden panels wrapped in a richly printed silk that also gave the space the grandeur to match its importance. And built-ins throughout the living area were modified subtly and adeptly to meet the homeowner’s specific needs.

In the end, “only her piano made the move to Chicago,” quips Kadlec; instead of reusing the muscular, family-friendly, boldly colored furnishings that had been in her former home, Kadlec steered his client to trimmer pieces clad in sumptuous, neutral-hued fabrics and endowed with graceful lines. “She has three children who come and go but don’t live here, so this made the place more polished,” the designer explains. It also gave her a befitting backdrop for a burgeoning art collection.

Today, the homeowner has no regrets about those on-the-spot choices she made, thanks to Kadlec’s skillful additions on top of these underpinnings. But she does have one wish. “If only it were warmer here, I could use the terrace every day,” she says wistfully.