His designs haven`t cropped up yet along tony Lake Shore Drive or in the North Shore`s exclusive suburbs. His work hasn`t appeared in the pages of glossy home magazines.
But if you pride yourself on predicting trends in food, fashion or design, remember this name: Douglas Garofalo.
In the last five years, Garofalo has racked up a handful of architectural awards and recognition. After he completed Yale University`s graduate school of architecture in 1987, Garofalo, 33, won a Skidmore, Owings & Merrill traveling fellowship in 1987-one of the country`s most prestigious awards for architecture students. Last year, he was one of six winners of the Architectural League of New York`s Young Architects competition.
But what really has brought Garafalo attention can be seen along Central Park Avenue in Skokie. Smack in the heart of suburbia is what looks like a giant gray and salmon-colored collage with jutting rooflines where a two-story, quasi-Cape-Cod house used to stand.
”What happened to your house?” neighbors began asking owners Miriam and Daniel Derman nine months ago. What happened is that Garofalo got his creative hands on the property. In adding a family room and upstairs bedroom and remodeling the kitchen, the architect transformed the exterior and interior to create more functional and light-filled spaces, to the owners` delight.
All of Garofalo`s trademarks are in place at the Derman home: quirky angles and rooflines, multiple skylights, a lavish unfolding of space, interior bridges, affordable materials (plywood and scrap metal get the nod over granite and marble) and lots of color. ”The most important reason for a home to exist is that it should shelter dreams,” says Garofalo. ”Any good architect can make a house stylish and functional, but not everyone can design it so that it`s not really finished until the owners live in it for a while. You want their idiosyncrasies to take over and the spaces to become whatever they want them to be.”
The Dermans wanted their home to be provocative. ”Both of us were always interested in architecture, with a bent toward the contemporary,” Miriam explains. ”After we interviewed three architects, including Doug, we knew he was the right one. We wanted to do something daring-not a boring, traditional Colonial.”
The Dermans ended up with a home that was anything but boring. The dining room became an intimate, low-ceilinged space with walls painted curry and gray. The adjacent hall stairwell was opened for light and contrast.
Upstairs, a steel bridge with clear acrylic floor leads to an office, newly configured by using a former closet and by raising the roof. A new dressing room off the purple master bedroom lies above part of the two-story family room. It allows Daniel, a physician, to rise early without disturbing the rest of the household.
Not everyone would give an architect such free rein. ”They knew what they wanted and gave me input, but they had no preconceived ideas of what it would look like, which is an architect`s dream.”
Garofalo`s dream clients don`t need to have the biggest budgets. ”If they`re willing to take chances with materials, you can still create something great.”
Pitching in
Such lack of pretension is refreshing-especially when many design professionals aren`t interested in clients with small budgets. By helping with construction, Garofalo has been able to hold down costs even further. He doesn`t hesitate to take up a hammer to help build his projects.
He did so with Brian Gary, one of his early clients. The men shared the labor to build a 1,000-square-foot, two-story addition to the back of the Garys` 1922 brick bungalow in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood.
From the rear now, a cluster of angled frame walls, protrusions and rooflines have led to an approving neighborhood chorus of ”Oh mys,” Brian Gary says. Inside, the design is more surprising, considering the front of the house was left intact.
Gary and his wife, Melissa, who describe themselves as morning people, had requested a light-filled room to gather in. Garofalo produced a space, 30 feet high and with many windows, reached from the kitchen through jagged brick columns that once formed part of the back wall of the house. They now provide continuity with the intact brick facade.
Maple surfaces within the new room add a contemporary feeling and are repeated in the flooring, a table for eating and reading and a partly enclosed sculpture overhead that owners and architect named the ”control tower”
because of the considerable air traffic over the house. A tiny step-down sitting extension in one corner, with windows on three sides, is a sheltered interior perch to soak up sun and enjoy back-yard views.
An open stairwell leads to small his-and-hers second-floor offices on either side of the stairs. Each has a hideaway. His is reached from an interior bridge that leads to the upper portion of the control tower. Hers is a cantilevered deck.
Garofalo`s own brick-and-frame three-story house in the Lakeview neighborhood percolates as a laboratory for architectural ideas. A large front room is the studio for him, partner David Leary (whom he met at Yale) and a summer intern, Philip W. Keller.
Front-to-back books
Low-lying bookcases Garofalo built elegantly snake from the front, past a bedroom to the large multipurpose back room that functions as kitchen, living room, eating space and workroom for his wife, Christine, an artist. The couple met when they were at the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary`s College, respectively.
His demanding schedule includes teaching at the University of Illinois at Chicago, entering competitions for real and theoretical projects and brainstorming periodically with an impressive group of other architects such as Daniel Wheeler and Margaret McCurry.
Garofalo`s work and ideas defy being lumped into any of the recent architectural movements such as post-modernism.
”You want to give just enough character or personality that people can recognize, but also think a lot about. You don`t want something to look haphazard. You want it to speak to those willing to look and think, and you can`t do that with something they`ve already seen. You want it to spark the imagination rather than cause the reaction of, `Oh, I`ve seen that before.` ” His willingness to take risks stems from several influences. As an undergraduate at Notre Dame, he gained mostly practical, traditional grounding that was furthered by a year`s study in Rome. Yale provided abstract theories and modernism and the advantage of an adjacent art department where ”ideas oozed through walls and doors.”
In between, he worked briefly for a small firm in Seattle, where he honed his carpentry skills.
After Yale, his Skidmore fellowship allowed him to travel for 7 1/2 months through India, Japan and Indonesia. He returned to the Midwest at Chicago architect Thomas Beeby`s suggestion. Beeby said it would be an easier place to get started than in New York, which Garofalo also considered. The two men had met at Yale when Beeby was dean of the architecture school.
Garofalo`s marriage to Christine has proved another strong influence.
”I`ve helped him add pattern, texture and layers, though I`ve always considered Doug an artist as well as an architect,” she says. ”Buildings aren`t only protection to him, but something to be visually savored.”
Recent competitions have provided additional exposure. His design (with partner Leary) for the Evanston Public Library didn`t win the competition last year but was a serious enough contender to be exhibited, considered a prestigious consolation prize for just 12 of the 200 or so entries.
He also garnered attention in an exhibit at the Gwenda Jay Gallery in the River North area. Pacific-Sakata Development, a real estate firm, asked eight architects to create scale models for a Burr Ridge site. Garofalo`s witty solution was to give equal weight to the house, garage and landscape.
Realistic approach
”Suburbia doesn`t exist without a garage,” he says. ”It`s also absurd to think a multimillion dollar house could fit into a natural landscape, which is not really natural but manicured and uses the latest technology to stay green.”
A competition for low-income housing in Pittsburgh this year led him to design a mixed-use living and working model that would make caring for young children easier and heighten a sense of community.
”It`s really one of my most autobiographical designs because it reflects the way Christine and I live and work,” he says. ”We enjoy what we do; we don`t consider it work, so we like being surrounded by our creative efforts.
”I think the most exciting thing about architecture now is that there`s no consensus the way there was a few years back. Everyone`s veering off in different directions, which makes it more exciting.”
