Future Firm Redesigns The Silver Room, an Iconic Boutique and Community Space on Chicago's Southside
Chicago, IL—Chicago-based architecture firm Future Firm, collaborating with Norman Teague Design Studios, has led the comprehensive redesign and renovation of The Silver Room, a storied, 1,500-sf southside Chicago boutique and community space, located in the vibrant Hyde Park neighborhood, that champions local artists, designers, and Black-owned businesses. The team created a flexible design system which supports The Silver Room’s ever-evolving display of products and vibrant programming schedule that sees the space shift almost daily from a boutique into a theater, storytelling space, gallery, classroom, dance floor, or hub for their annual block party.
Founded by Chicagoan Eric Williams in 1997, The Silver Room has assumed 3 locations and undergone over 10 redesigns over the course of its 22-year history. These included its inaugural space in Wicker Park, a pop-up boutique in Wicker Park, and the current Hyde Park location. The latest renovation marks the first time Williams engaged a full team of architects and designers and applied concepts such as behavioral science and flow of traffic. In keeping with the boutique’s mission to support local artists and artists of color in particular, Williams gathered a design team from the surrounding community. While the recent emergence of COVID-19 forced The Silver Room to temporarily close, it also offered the opportunity to complete the long-planned renovation.
Local architects Ann Lui and Craig Reschke, founders and principals of Future Firm, began with a design strategy centered around flexibility, simplicity, and a unifying aesthetic that transforms the space into a quiet backdrop for Silver Room’s curated selection of products. “A minimal design approach becomes a platform for the people, products, events that are the core of Silver Room to take center stage,” says Lui. All armatures of the exposed ceiling are painted a monolithic white, while the walls are coated in a two-tone scheme of white and gray. Four custom x-shaped neon lights run down the center of the room, elongating the rectangular space and drawing the eye from front to back, while the floor is coated with grey, glossy epoxy that is simultaneously resilient and easy to clean.
This monochromatic, monolithic backdrop highlights and accentuates the custom plywood display systems, designed in collaboration with Norman Teague Design Studios, founded by local designer and educator Norman Teague whose diverse practice (inclusive of furniture design, consumer products, public sculpture, performances, and designed spaces) is driven by urbanism, community building, and human-centered exchange. Implemented as a plug-and-play system, each unit allows simple but significant adjustments as merchandise changes—pegs, rods, and shelves can be raised or lowered, removed or added. Display cases throughout the space are mounted on wheels, providing easy flexibility when the interior layout requires adjustment for larger events.
In several instances, elements from The Silver Room’s prior iterations were retained and embedded in the new design, simultaneously reflecting strategic cost saving measures and honoring the boutique’s long history. The DJ booth and front desk were preserved and clad in new plywood facing, while the store’s logo, located on the face of the front desk, is cut out to show the original wood below—an homage to past millwork.
Other strategic design measures included the application of behavioral science and flow of traffic to the layout, according to a strategic plan completed for The Silver Room by Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Per the plan, 90% of people turn right when entering a store, so the most popular, highest selling item—sunglasses—are placed to the right of the door. On the left, a less busy area, the team introduced a new books and media area which has space for browsing. The area has become very popular for its focus on books covering anti-racist efforts, Black artists and authors, and art and design, as well as vintage records and magazines.
Throughout the renovation, construction processes prioritized South-side based vendors and trades, continuing The Silver Room’s community-focused mission and commitment to supporting Black-owned businesses. Lighting and electricity was facilitated by Gravity (Andrew Kirkland), who has worked with Williams since the 1990s, while digital fabrication processes for the CNC plug-and-play woodwork system was developed by local fabricator Max Davis. All construction was adapted to accommodate COVID-19 restrictions, simultaneously minimizing on-site work and accelerating implementation.
The adaptability of each element of the redesign also highlights The Silver Room’s focus on community engagement, where artists, designers, and even visitors play a role in shaping the space. “Inherently it’s a retail store, but it’s much more than that. It’s a community space, it’s a gathering space, it’s a place for book signings, it’s a dance floor, it’s a place for fashion shows. I like the fact that it’s a lot of different things, and the more people who discover it, the more things it can become,” says Williams. “The way I look at it, we just kind of create a platform and people who come in can create what they want from it.”
“I’m sure it will change as more hands get involved,” echoes Teague. “The Silver Room is such a cultural place and has so many different minds, bodies, and souls that will give an additional touch to what we’ve done. So we’ve just laid down canvas that will allow for other people to come in and be a part of this.”
For Future Firm’s Lui and Reschke, the project offered a unique opportunity to collaborate with both the broader design team as well as the community that surrounds and activates The Silver Room. “While we’ve been trained to see architecture as a top-down process, The Silver Room’s renovation was more like being in a band: horizontal collaboration, trust, and flow,” says Lui. Reschke continues: “With the accelerated timeline, every day was an open back-and-forth between the design and construction team, sharing hand sketches by text or checking in on site, from the details of a lighting fixture to the challenge of material procurement during COVID-19. Overtime, we learned this mode of work is simply a reflection of the spirit of The Silver Room community in general.”
As a testament to the renovation’s collaborative spirit, Future Firm is beginning a second project for Eric Williams, which grew from their experience working together on The Silver Room. They are currently in the initial stages of designing a restaurant on Chicago’s southside, in Bronzeville.
Photography by Ross Floyd.
Project details:
Year Completed: 2020
Square Footage: 1,500 sf
Location: Hyde Park, Chicago
Address: 1506 E 53rd St, Chicago, IL 60615
Client: Eric Williams
Credits:
Architecture: Future Firm
Design: Norman Teague Design Studios (Team: Ebere Agwuncha, Daniel Overbey, Nic Baker)
Lighting: Gravity (Andrew Kirkland)
Digital Fabrication: Max Davis
Painting: Larry Conner
About The Silver Room
Founded in 1997 by Owner Eric Williams, The Silver Room is a Chicago Institution and brand whose mission is to create a global community through art and culture. Our intention is to curate spaces where authenticity and creativity can thrive encouraging the growth of the community, personal expression, and resources. We are the intersection of art, community, and culture. Here, we value and encourage opportunities to bring elements and artifacts from around the world to your front stoop. Carefully curating a showroom experience that introduces you to a unique arrangement of goods, sounds, and events. We are both Chicago and a neighbor to the world. Come with us as we introduce you to new sights, new sounds, new art, and welcome you to our community.
About Norman Teague Design Studios
Norman Teague runs a Chicago based design studio focused on projects and pedagogy that address the systematic complexity of urbanism and the culture of communities. Specializing in custom furniture, crafted objects and custom fixtures that deliver a personal touch or unique aesthetic detail. Teague's past projects have included consumer products, public sculpture, performances and specially designed retail spaces. Educated first in architecture and later in product design, Teague's vision motivates him to design with no limit. Teague prides himself on working with locally sourced materials by local fabricators to create objects and spaces that explore simplicity in materials, honesty in the hand made and cleverness in form and function as it relates to the culture of each client and/or community.
In 2016, Teague partnered with Fo Wilson co founded blkHaUS studio, L3C. The team blends contemporary aesthetics with materials to create furniture, objects, curating events and public spaces that transform common typologies into original works representative of twenty-first century design. We strive for our work and presence in the design profession to instigate greater inclusion of black and brown narratives in the history of design and promote design's relevance to contemporary communities of color. Teague holds an MFA in Designed Objects from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BA from Columbia College Chicago. In 2016 he was awarded the Claire Rosen and Samuel Edes Award foundation prize for emerging artists, in 2017 selected to be a creative collaborator on the exhibition team for the Obama Presidential Center and received a 3Arts award in 2019.
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