Winston Churchill once said: "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us." This quote almost seems written specifically for the architecture design firm Kwong von Glinow. Alison von Glinow and Lap Chi Kwong are married and partners in practice. For the last couple years, they’ve been designing and building their own live/work building in a northern neighborhood of Chicago called Edgewater. A model of the house lived in their dining room for months as they conceived of the house, making daily changes until it was constructed and they could move in. They shaped the design, now it shapes them. In this video, Kwong von Glinow takes us through this building — called the Ardmore House — and they explain how they designed it, what it’s like to live in, and how it has shaped their work since.
Architecture with Stewart is a YouTube journey exploring architecture’s deep and enduring stories in all their bewildering glory. Weekly videos and occasional live events breakdown a wide range of topics related to the built environment in order to increase their general understanding and advocate their importance in shaping the world we inhabit.
Stewart Hicks is an architectural design educator that leads studios and lecture courses as an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He also serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts and is the co-founder of the practice Design With Company. His work has earned awards such as the Architecture Record Design Vanguard Award or the Young Architect’s Forum Award and has been featured in exhibitions such as the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Design Miami, as well as at the V&A Museum and Tate Modern in London. His writings can be found in the co-authored book Misguided Tactics for Propriety Calibration, published with the Graham Foundation, as well as essays in MONU magazine, the AIA Journal Manifest, Log, bracket, and the guest-edited issue of MAS Context on the topic of character architecture.
