Bachrach Clothing

2001 Chicago Illinois

Tom Bader, Project Principal with Wheeler Kearns Architects

This 4700 sf design studio for Bachrach, a prominent local men’s retail clothing brand, is located in a historic concrete loft building in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood.  The building once housed the Armor Institute, which absorbed prominent architects artists and designers from the Bauhaus, and later transformed into the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The new design studio includes a flexible open office area, staging and exhibit space, conference rooms and private offices for the design staff responsible for the brand clothing products. The loft structure of spare concrete columns and ceilings were maintained in their original state, and a new concrete floor installed. Other interventions were kept to a minimum. Suspended up-lighting augments the abundant natural light from the large north facing windows. A freestanding display wall with knife edge profile anchors one end and conceals HVAC and support spaces. Desks are located off to one side beneath a canopy that conceals the infrastructure of HVAC ducts, lighting, power, and communications and cork floors that echo the canopy above. A 14’ high x 50’ long fabric curtain wall at the entry efficiently conceals storage space while referring to the essential activity of clothing design. It also conveniently provides a subtle reference to the “curtain wall” modern architecture prominent in Chicago. Opposite the curtain wall are private offices contained within translucent glass that borrow the natural light of the studio space.

An annex space across the public hall was added 2 years later with similar detailing.