Although 4247 N. Hermitage was not my first apartment after college, it was the first apartment I had the inclination, time and resources to “design” and “build.” Moving in to 4247 N. Hermitage coincided with my acquisition of an assortment of power and hand tools, access to my parent’s garage “shop” on weekends, and access to one of the Chicago Park District’s few remaining woodworking shops, the Henry Horner Park woodshop at 2741 W. Montrose.

The first piece of furniture I ever designed and built was a shelving system for my stereo system constructed out of 1x12 pine boards w./11 ¼” diameter radiused ends, stained walnut brown, and then given a relatively high-gloss finish. In between boards I used stacks of dark brown paver bricks. The idea for this system was given to me by my father who told me that these were the types of shelving systems his college house-mates constructed to temporarily house their college belongings. I originally installed this stereo shelving system in the bedroom of my parent’s house summer of 1983. When my parents sold our house I brought my stereo shelving system to my new apartment at 4247 N. Hermitage.

My new apartment incorporated a couple of my Donald Judd inspired furniture pieces, like my drafting desk w./storage below, but I didn’t have the time and/or money to fabricate additional furniture using hand and power tools. What I needed at that time was “readymade” furniture.

As a young architect in Chicago renting a relatively large apartment in a decent Chicago neighborhood, there wasn’t a lot of extra money left over for furniture and/or furnishings. In fact, beyond the 2 slices of Villa May pizza I was eating on my way home from work late each evening, there wasn’t much money left over for food either. The little money I had, I pumped into the purchase of 1x12 pine boards and clay drainage pipes. One way of justifying a minimalist aesthetic and lifestyle was living paycheck to paycheck and constantly finding myself broke.

These are the few photographs I have from this time and apartment. Most were never developed beyond large contact sheets. There was also an almost Wizard of Oz in reverse thing going on with my photographic documentation as I transitioned from color photography to black and white. Looking back, I can’t decide whether the color photographs or the black and white photographs give my apartment and life the most austere or ascetic aesthetic?

I had previously encountered the thinking and work of Marcel Duchamp by way of Robert Rauschenberg and his “combines.” Seeking an alternative to representing objects in paint, Marcel Duchamp began presenting found objects as art. He selected mass-produced, commercially available, utilitarian objects, designating them as art and gave them the title “readymades.” Marcel Duchamp’s readymades disrupted centuries of thinking about the artist’s role as a skilled creator of original handmade objects. Instead, Duchamp argued, “An ordinary object [could be] elevated to the dignity of a work of art by the mere choice of an artist.” Marcel Duchamp also claimed (but here I disagree with him as I believe he had great taste in selecting beautiful found objects) that the readymade defied the notion that art must be beautiful. Marcel Duchamp claimed to have chosen everyday objects “based on a reaction of visual indifference, with at the same time a total absence of good or bad taste (as quoted in The Art of Assemblage: A Symposium, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, October 19, 1961).

Assemblage was another word that I encountered in 1984-1985 but it wasn’t until I encountered the book The Art of Assemblage while studying architecture in graduate school at MIT that I began to better understand the concept of assemblage and its potential relationship to my way of thinking and preferences as they pertained to architecture and design. The idea that a functional object could be a collection of ideas, materials, and assembly techniques leading to an object that was structural, functional, and beautiful sounds obvious, but at the time it was a revelation as I either always thought or was trained to believe that a design work was unique and somehow miraculously came from one’s imagination with little or no evidence of precedent. The idea of literally seeing precedent in the final work/composition was borderline sacrilege, but I loved it.

Finding 1x12 boards was easy enough, sourcing bricks or concrete blocks was easy enough, but hauling bricks and concrete blocks was less than desirable. I started looking around at building supply stores and that’s where I spotted the clay pipes that would eventually end up in a number of my 4247 N. Hermitage shelving systems. The clay pipes came in round forms and square forms. The longer dimension was perfect for either the proper vertical spacing of shelves or the pairing of 1x12 boards in order to create a much deeper shelf.

I can’t remember if my use of futons was a financial necessity or influenced by my always present, and at that time, expanding interest in Japanese traditional architecture, product design, and ways of living. Whatever the reason, I purchased a full-size futon as my bed for my bedroom and two twin size yoga mat futons as a “sofa/guest beds” for my living/TV room.

All of my furniture up until this point had been imagined and drawn at my Donald Judd inspired drafting desk, but things were starting to change in my architectural drawing world. I was working at Perkins & Will Architects at the time and I was being transitioned from hand drafting to computer drafting via pre Windows DOS command Autocad and computers. I decided that I needed to learn more about the potential of computers as a design and drawing tool so I purchased an Apple Mac Classic computer and an Apple dot matrix printer. I hadn’t yet figured out what type of desk a desk-top computer needed and the only desk I had at that time was my drafting desk which I wasn’t ready to abandon just yet.

Clay pipes aren’t much lighter than bricks and concrete blocks, and for some shelving they are too tall. At some point I spotted empty paint cans and found them to be visually appealing, light weight, the proper height for vertical spacing, and affordable.

Although I owned and collected art, for some reason I no longer remember, I elected to cover my walls in grids of homosote (or chalkboard and cork in this instance) which allowed me to pin up drawings, post-cards, and any other images that I found of interest or influence.

During the Christmas I spent in my 4247 N. Hermitage apartment, I photographed myself, inside my front hall closet pine board and clay pipe bookshelf system, holding a chalkboard with the name of each of my friends and family member's names written out with a Christmas greeting. I also took the time and put in the effort to photograph myself, a kind of meta-self-portrait and/or pre-selfie.