If home is where the heart is, the San Miguel Apartments on Uptown’s Argyle Street couldn’t be much homier. An affordable housing initiative of Travelers & Immigrants Aid-a social service organization operating citywide-the San Miguel has been lavished with unusual affection: The once abandoned 71-unit building now boasts an inviting lobby (complete with crown moldings and a Persian carpet) and a courtyard garden that might be the envy of the Gold Coast.
But TIA’s TLC went even further. Knowing that there’s more to a home than four walls, the agency invited a group of designers and architects to do their pro bono best decorating four apartments with budgets of $500 to $600 each. The results of their efforts will be presented to the public Thursday in “Showcase on a Shoestring.”
While showhouses are generally big, old, no-holds-barred opportunities for designers to strut their stuff for a good cause before a good crowd (picking up a bit of business in the process), the down-to-earth San Miguel event operates on a slightly different agenda.
“In many ways,” notes TIA spokeswoman Ann Reusche, “Uptown is still a port of entry for this city. It has the second-highest rate of active AIDS cases in Chicago, it has the highest infant mortality rate, it has one of the highest populations of homeless people, one of the highest populations of runaway youth and one of the most diverse immigrant refugee populations in the city.
“All of these populations tend to be impacted by poverty and displacement. A typial showcase would have been insensitive to how hard it is not only to find affordable housing, but to furnish an apartment if you’re poor.”
Apartments at the San Miguel-named in honor of a TIA caseworker who died of complications from AIDS-include studios and one- and two-bedroom units with rents ranging from $270 to $340. Thirty apartments are reserved for people with HIV infection and AIDS, each of whom will receive a $50 monthly rent subsidy.
Getting started
Treated as if tenants themselves, the designers-Chip Long, Deborah Doyle and Carl Hunter of Doyle & Associates, Roger Remaley, and Susan Aurinko-Mostow and Diane Tucker of Aurinko/Tucker Design-were provided with a TIA startup package that included used tables, chairs, dressers, couches and new mattresses donated by Spring Air Mattress Co. of Chicago. The rest was up to them.
Remaley, whose clients include The Limited Stores, went for a faux ’30s decor. Long outfitted his ground-floor studio in a men’s-club-Maine-lodge look. The Aurinko/Tucker team took a cue from their view of the courtyard garden, producing a light, bucolic effect in a 4th-floor one-bedroom apartment. Doyle and Hunter opted for fantasy, turning a two-bedroom unit into a celestial confection constructed of such mundane materials as cardboard and bedsheets.
Long, who also served as project manager, became very possessive about “his” apartment. “I really worked on it as if I were going to live here,” he explains. “I had to get into it that way because I wasn’t getting any feedback from a client.”
Painted hunter green, the studio is a study in Ralph-Lauren-meets-the-Salvation-Army. Long framed the central window with a bookcase made from 100-year-old boards, transformed a nondescript chest of drawers with a coat of red paint and arrowhead stenciling, livened up a dated Danish side chair with a gold lame pillow, brought in a beautiful old torchiere and hung some thrift-store landscape art on the walls.
His big-ticket items were the spread and bolsters for the daybed, done in a bold, Bill Blass plaid. The country kitchen features a banquette made from an old radiator cover, two pine chairs from an Indiana flea market and shutters from a chicken coop as a window treatment.
`Uplifting . . . whimsical’
“We felt the aesthetic should be uplifting, almost whimsical,” says Doyle.
Indeed, it is. Walls, furniture and drape (old sheets from the Ambassador West Hotel) are sponged various shades of blue and purple. Cloud-shaped pillows sit on the couch and vinyl kitchen chairs sport blue-tipped, cardboard wings. An altar-like sideboard made of corrugated cardboard incorporates simple worklights and a mirror festooned with a filigree of brass filings.
The master bedroom features a massive headboard and throne-like chair (also built of corrugated cardboard), while a moon and stars hang from the ceiling in the children’s room.
Despite its otherworldly ambience, Doyle sees the design in down-to-earth terms. “I wanted it to be fun, but I also meant it to be serious. Frank Gehry, the architect, has been doing cardboard furniture for years.
“A few months ago, the `Home’ show (the recently canceled weekday program that aired on WLS-Ch. 7) did a segment on a cardboard table that you can buy and assemble yourself. I really wanted this furniture to be something that people can look at and say, `I can do that.’ You don’t have to be a furniture-maker to do this stuff. All you need is a ruler and a knife and you’re there.”
Some practical advice
Seeing what can be done with little money is wonderful, but translating these design ideas into real terms is what this project is all about. So Aurinko-Mostow will develop a series of workshops to help tenants size up the potential of an old chair and make the most of their limited resources. In the works are shopping trips to second-hand shops in the suburbs (cheaper than those in the city) and workhops for painting and reupholstering furniture.
Although staple-gunning a swatch of Goodwill fabric to a kitchen chair is far from what she did in a client’s 5,000-square-foot vacation house in Aspen, Colo., recently, Aurinko-Mostow had little trouble making the adjustment. “It’s tough for a lot of people in my profession to understand how we can do what we’ve done here. But I’ve lived by myself. I’ve been unemployed. I think I’ve been able to bring something of that experience to the project.”
Besides dealing with a small budget, Aurinko-Mostow got an education in decorating a space for wheelchair accessibility. “We know the ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) regulations, but this was the first time we had to actually meet them in an apartment. Furniture placement is really important. So is pulling a wheelchair up to a table. We chose a dropleaf table to make that easier. And we hung posters a little lower so that they can he seen without craning the neck.”
The painting on the walls
As project manager, Long was determined to eliminate any trace of the institutional style that characterizes most subsidized housing. “One of the things I feel personally,” he says, “is that if you make something look like it’s indestructible, somebody will prove you wrong. But if it looks like somebody did something special, chances are people will appreciate the effort and take care of things.”
The most stunning example of this approach at the San Miguel are the murals artist Curt Bewley executed in a skylit stairwell. A specialist in faux finishes and trompe l’oeil, Bewley adorned the four-story space with exquisite renditions of paintings by Manet, Degas and Van Gogh.
“Initially,” he says, “I was going to do something very simple, a hillside landscape with a few people here and there. Then, in December, I was looking through some books and came across the Impressionists. And it all just sprang from there.”
While Bewley’s vertical gallery offers residents an indoor oasis, Chris Gent’s 1,500-square-foot “outdoor living room” provides escape of another nature. A landscape architect with the Chicago Park District, Gent transformed a litter-strewn courtyard into a restful patch of green, complete with brick walkways and reflecting pool. Just the place to contemplate the start of a new life.
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A lunch benefiting the Travelers & Immigrants Aid’s Housing and Hope Fund will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday at Julie Mai’s, 5025 N. Clark St. General tours of the San Miguel Apartments, 907 W. Argyle St., will be held from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday; the designers will be on hand to meet the public. Admission: $15 for the tour alone, $30 with lunch. A cocktail reception also will be held from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the San Miguel; cost $35. For more information, call 312-561-3800.
