my design wonder years...crate & barrel north & clybourn coffee shop
By the time Crate & Barrel thought about adding a coffee shop to their North & Clybourn Home Store Chicago location, the project was already under construction. This meant there was little time to conceptualize a Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop, design, design develop, produce construction documents, and coordinate with the general contractor and sub-contractors the location of all of the various required electrical, plumbing, and mechanical connections. Oh… and then there was the matter of the Health Department and all of their various requirements for preparing and serving food and drinks inside of a retail business.
The Crate & Barrel Home Store at North & Clybourn in Chicago opened in 1998. The first Crate and Barrel store opened on Wells Street in Chicago December 2, 1962. Thirty-five years to develop and perfect the aesthetic of a Crate & Barrel store and less than a year to imagine, draw, and install a Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop.
Undertaking such a seemingly impossible task requires a team effort and fortunately Crate & Barrel was one of the most amazing teams I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of during my professional career.
Many of the names and records associated with my work on the first Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop are no longer available to me as I no longer work for Crate & Barrel, but certain key players and my memories of those key players remain intact.
Perhaps the key person in the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop design process was Raymond Arenson. Raymond “discovered/found” me working as a furniture salesperson at the Michigan Avenue Crate & Barrel Home Store. Like me, Raymond had studied architecture at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, but found himself drawn towards the world of retail architecture, design, and merchandising. Raymond and I coordinated all aspects of the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop’s design. Not only were we imagining and designing a coffee shop for the Chicago North & Clybourn location, but we were imagining and designing a concept that could be installed in future Crate & Barrel Home Stores that would inevitably have different floor plans, merchandising layouts, and/or regional differences.
Our Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop needed a visual/graphic identity, i.e., menu boards, cups, and packaging. Lucky for me, Crate & Barrel had its own in-house graphic design/visual communications department/team. Working closely with Sandro Franchini and Paula Bodnar, we were able to imagine, design develop, fabricate, and install a coffee shop with an architecturally, graphically, and visually unique identity, an identity that simultaneously fit in with, and complemented, a Crate & Barrel Home Store identity that had evolved over thirty-five-years of trial-and-error design.
Rather than attempting to design the behind the counter components of a Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop from scratch, we opted to team up with a super cool coffee shop out of Milwaukee Wisconsin then known as Alterra. The Alterra team was instrumental in helping us understand the nuts and bolts of designing and sourcing all of the necessary fixtures and equipment necessary to both brew and serve coffee and coffee’s many related pastry treats. The Alterra team also connected us with the local artist who ended up painting the custom paintings, fabricating the display case/sneeze guards, and the custom designed straw/coffee lid holders/dispensers.
Crate and Barrel employees have a way of never really leaving the Crate & Barrel family. Bill Scarim of WW Displays was an early Crate & Barrel employee who got his start working in the Crate & Barrel warehouse. Back then, Bill had a side gig fabricating the additional barrels and crates necessary for the display and sale of Crate & Barrel merchandise. Bill Scarim left Crate & Barrel to start WW Displays, a company that fabricated the variety of store counters and fixtures that Crate & Barrel used within the interiors of their stores. For our Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop, WW Displays fabricated and installed the unique zinc laminated counters and cherry veneered cabinetry that acted as the foundational aesthetic of the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop “brand.” WW Displays assisted in sourcing the welder hired to fabricate a custom built in Charlotte Perriand inspired bench and fabricating our custom designed zinc, cherry, and paint menu boards.
The number of hours invested in designing, drawing, fabricating, and installing the first Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop is today a melancholy memory as the North & Clybourn Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop is no more and another Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop I worked on for the Tyson’s Corner shopping center in Virginia is no more as well. I think a lot of young people pursue the profession of architecture with the hope that their designs will outlive them. I know I was once one of these young people hoping to have my designs outlive me and although the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shops I labored over with love for so many overtime hours back in the late 1990s are no longer in existence, photographs, drawings, and my memories are digital artifacts that allow for us to virtually visit, remember, and/or imagine what it must have been like to drink coffee out of a custom Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop insulated paper cup while seated on a custom designed Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop built in bench, contemplating whether to buy a throw pillow or an entire room full of furniture.
The Crate & Barrel Home Store at North & Clybourn in Chicago opened in 1998. The first Crate and Barrel store opened on Wells Street in Chicago December 2, 1962. Thirty-five years to develop and perfect the aesthetic of a Crate & Barrel store and less than a year to imagine, draw, and install a Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop.
Undertaking such a seemingly impossible task requires a team effort and fortunately Crate & Barrel was one of the most amazing teams I’ve had the good fortune to be a part of during my professional career.
Many of the names and records associated with my work on the first Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop are no longer available to me as I no longer work for Crate & Barrel, but certain key players and my memories of those key players remain intact.
Perhaps the key person in the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop design process was Raymond Arenson. Raymond “discovered/found” me working as a furniture salesperson at the Michigan Avenue Crate & Barrel Home Store. Like me, Raymond had studied architecture at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, but found himself drawn towards the world of retail architecture, design, and merchandising. Raymond and I coordinated all aspects of the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop’s design. Not only were we imagining and designing a coffee shop for the Chicago North & Clybourn location, but we were imagining and designing a concept that could be installed in future Crate & Barrel Home Stores that would inevitably have different floor plans, merchandising layouts, and/or regional differences.
Our Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop needed a visual/graphic identity, i.e., menu boards, cups, and packaging. Lucky for me, Crate & Barrel had its own in-house graphic design/visual communications department/team. Working closely with Sandro Franchini and Paula Bodnar, we were able to imagine, design develop, fabricate, and install a coffee shop with an architecturally, graphically, and visually unique identity, an identity that simultaneously fit in with, and complemented, a Crate & Barrel Home Store identity that had evolved over thirty-five-years of trial-and-error design.
Rather than attempting to design the behind the counter components of a Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop from scratch, we opted to team up with a super cool coffee shop out of Milwaukee Wisconsin then known as Alterra. The Alterra team was instrumental in helping us understand the nuts and bolts of designing and sourcing all of the necessary fixtures and equipment necessary to both brew and serve coffee and coffee’s many related pastry treats. The Alterra team also connected us with the local artist who ended up painting the custom paintings, fabricating the display case/sneeze guards, and the custom designed straw/coffee lid holders/dispensers.
Crate and Barrel employees have a way of never really leaving the Crate & Barrel family. Bill Scarim of WW Displays was an early Crate & Barrel employee who got his start working in the Crate & Barrel warehouse. Back then, Bill had a side gig fabricating the additional barrels and crates necessary for the display and sale of Crate & Barrel merchandise. Bill Scarim left Crate & Barrel to start WW Displays, a company that fabricated the variety of store counters and fixtures that Crate & Barrel used within the interiors of their stores. For our Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop, WW Displays fabricated and installed the unique zinc laminated counters and cherry veneered cabinetry that acted as the foundational aesthetic of the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop “brand.” WW Displays assisted in sourcing the welder hired to fabricate a custom built in Charlotte Perriand inspired bench and fabricating our custom designed zinc, cherry, and paint menu boards.
The number of hours invested in designing, drawing, fabricating, and installing the first Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop is today a melancholy memory as the North & Clybourn Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop is no more and another Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop I worked on for the Tyson’s Corner shopping center in Virginia is no more as well. I think a lot of young people pursue the profession of architecture with the hope that their designs will outlive them. I know I was once one of these young people hoping to have my designs outlive me and although the Crate & Barrel Coffee Shops I labored over with love for so many overtime hours back in the late 1990s are no longer in existence, photographs, drawings, and my memories are digital artifacts that allow for us to virtually visit, remember, and/or imagine what it must have been like to drink coffee out of a custom Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop insulated paper cup while seated on a custom designed Crate & Barrel Coffee Shop built in bench, contemplating whether to buy a throw pillow or an entire room full of furniture.
