Article by Dennis Rodkin
An angular, glassy house made of stacked shapes and airy overhangs that went up for sale today in Naperville is the work of an edgy Chicago architecture firm whose most-seen building may be one next to the Kennedy Expressway.
Drivers on the Kennedy know the building for the way it appears yellow to drivers headed south but blue to those driving north.
Homeowner Judy Bieniek was looking for something similarly unique in 2011 when she approached Juan Moreno, principal of architecture firm JGMA, about designing a house for her 1.6-acre wooded lot in Naperville with a stream running through it.
“I had a beautiful lot and I didn’t want to do the big mansion that everybody has,” Bieniek says. “I wanted a different perspective, and Juan had it.”
Moreno and his team have designed a number of bold, sometimes wild forms that dot the city. Along with Northeastern Illinois University’s El Centro building, whose tall fins give Kennedy drivers the impression it’s two different colors, there’s the giant orange shape tattooed with windows that houses a health center in Brighton Park and the bendy Uno Soccer Academy, later renamed Soto High School, in Gage Park. The firm is now part of the group designing the new $730 million concourse under construction at O’Hare International Airport.
Bieniek is asking just under $2.4 million for her Driftwood Court house, a five-bedroom, roughly 6,450-square- footer. The property, whose wooded setting belies the fact that it’s about a mile and a half from Naperville’s downtown core filled with restaurants and other attractions, is represented by Walt Burrell and Bridget Salela, Coldwell Banker Realty agents. Bieniek said she built the house while widowed and raising a child and is now downsizing.
The triangular site had never previously been built on, either during Naperville’s old farming days or its later suburban build-up, and when it went up for sale in 2011, “I grabbed it,” Bieniek says. Hoping to preserve as many trees as possible as well as the spring-fed, unnamed stream, she envisioned a house that would be mostly glass “and leave as much of (the site) as possible alone.”
A contractor told her about Moreno, and when she went to meet him and his team in their downtown Chicago office, the choice was clear, she recalls. “Juan had a good energy and a lot of creativity,” she says. While the firm’s work was more big institutional signature buildings than single-family homes, “I took a leap of faith,” Bieniek says. Completed in 2013, the house looks from the street as if it’s about a story and a half tall, almost like a long metal bar that has been broken in two. In the back it reveals itself to be three stories, with walls of glass and metal- roofed balconies, as seen in the photo at the top of this story.
Inside, the living room is two stories high, with windows on two sides, “with the trees all around you,” Bieniek says. One-story ceilings in the kitchen and dining room make them feel more intimate, but they, too, have ample views of the trees.
The architects’ design “was really focused on bringing in the beauty of the outdoors,” Bieniek says.
On the third floor is a primary bedroom suite with an indoor-outdoor feel, the bedroom opening onto a covered balcony that is bigger than the room and has views into the treetops.
Among JGMA’s many other building area a former K-Mart store in Waukegan turned into a colorful high school building and a former industrial building in Pilsen made over as a high school whose outer walls change colors with the light.
Bieniek says she’s still pleased with her choice of architects. “Juan is ground-breaking,” she says. “He has a different approach.”
To see the original story, click here.
