The Elmhurst Art Museum has unveiled details of a new installation taking place in the Mies van der Rohe-designed McCormick House in Chicago. Designed by Luftwerk, a Chicago-based artistic collaborative of Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero, the “Parallel Perspectives” installation is a site-specific exhibition that uses color and light interventions to activate and interpret the house, celebrating the use of geometry in the mid-Century prefab prototype.
As Mies van der Rohe’s adopted city, Chicago and its surrounding area are home to more of the Modernist architect’s projects than anywhere else in the world, from Crown Hall to Federal Center to the Farnsworth House. Perhaps for that very reason, the McCormick House, located in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst, is one of the lesser known projects in the architect's’ oeuvre – despite being one of just three single-family homes in the United States completed by Mies.
Built in 1952 for Robert McCormick Jr. – the owner of the land where Mies' 860-880 N. Lake Shore Drive was constructed – the house was moved down the street in 1994, where it was attached to the newly built Elmhurst Museum of Art via a 15-foot-long corridor. While its relocation allowed the building to remain in good care over the next 23 years, it also obscured the home’s front facade, “camouflaging one of the most prized objects in the museum's collection.”
But that’s all about to change, thanks to an upcoming restoration that will remove the offending corridor, allowing the original architecture to shine once again.
