Another turning point
A fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist
Directs you where to go

So make the best of this test
And don't ask why
It's not a question
But a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable
But in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

Looking back at my architectural life during the 1990’s dates distort. According to NCARB (the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards), I received my Architectural license or at least filed it with NCARB 12.02.93. The date is not important. What is important is that on that date or shortly thereafter, I went for a haircut at a beauty salon in Roscoe Village called “Big Hair.” After getting my hair cut, the beautician spun me around to take a look at my cut in the mirror. Rather than my eye going to my reflection, it went to a small, framed piece of paper on my beautician’s vanity. The small piece of paper was a State of Illinois Beautician’s License, a license that looked just like my State of Illinois Architect’s License, the only difference being hers read “Illinois Licensed Cosmetologist” and mine read “Illinois Licensed Architect.” I also learned that her license and my license each cost $35.00 per year to both acquire and renew. By 1993 I was already having doubts about a lifetime career in architecture, but for some reason, this experience stands out as a kind of existential tipping point.

The next day, I made the decision to “drop out of architecture.” I hastily arranged a meeting to talk to my employers, George Pappageorge & David Haymes, and at that meeting, I told George and David that I needed to leave Pappageorge Haymes. The pretense I used, which was true, was that I was designing a vacation home for my parents and I needed more time to think and work on such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. To their credit, George & David asked me to stay and offered me office space and resources so that I could work on my parent’s vacation house prior to “rejoining” their firm. I thanked them, turned them down, and left.

Around that same time, I spotted in the Chicago Reader newspaper an advertisement for a sales associate position at the Crate & Barrel Outlet on North & Halsted. My interest in furniture making and the potential of selling my furniture designs had grown as a result of having fabricated an apartment full of Donald Judd-inspired furniture. Now was my opportunity to learn about how furniture was sold and why people purchased the furniture they purchased.

When I applied to Crate & Barrel, I “lied” on my resume. I intentionally removed my master’s degree in architecture from MIT, thinking it might look suspicious, but left on my resume my undergraduate degree in architecture from the University of Illinois, thinking this might actually work in my favor. I wrote a three-page cover letter explaining to Crate & Barrel why I was a perfect fit for their company, and how working for Crate & Barrel was essentially my destiny. My three-page cover letter worked (or the Crate & Barrel Outlet was that desperate); I was hired. I had officially “dropped out of architecture.”

Within 9 months of starting and working at the North & Clybourn Crate & Barrel Outlet, a woman by the name of Barb Reimann showed up to meet with me. I’m sure I’m remembering our conversation incorrectly, but the gist of what we talked about was: 1. Crate & Barrel liked me, 2. I liked Crate & Barrel, 3. Was there anything else at Crate & Barrel I would like to do other than work at the Crate & Barrel Outlet? I told Barb that I was really interested in furniture and would love the opportunity to work at the Crate & Barrel furniture store on Michigan Avenue. Next thing I knew I was interviewing for a sales associate position at the Michigan Avenue Crate & Barrel furniture store, and to my surprise, was hired.

I’d never been asked before by an employer if I was happy, what I really wanted to do, and/or what my expectations were. All of this was a revelation as were the subtleties of my job such as punching a card to verify my arrival, departure, work hours, scheduled 15-minute breaks, enforced lunch, no overtime, and no working beyond 5 days and 40 hours/week. Working a weekend day at Crate & Barrel was a requirement, but I also received a day off during the week which turned out to be an amazingly surreal experience that I look back upon with nostalgia.

Some of the nicest people I’ve met, I met at Crate & Barrel. Crate & Barrel furniture was especially fun as I was on commission, which meant I was expected to sell a certain amount of furniture per month, and the amount of furniture I sold impacted how much money I made each month. I was simultaneously fascinated and terrified. Terrified because as a self-proclaimed introvert, the idea of walking up to a stranger and asking them if I could help them was about as terrifying an experience as I could have ever imagined.

In the beginning, I was awful at sales, i.e. “Can I interest you in a custom sofa to go along with that throw pillow?” but I was pretty good at helping the store designers set up new displays each season, and eventually I found my groove, occasionally drawing floor plans or working on sketch paper overlays of floor plans for customers buying more than one piece of furniture. More than once my store manager put me in a cab to go to the house/apartment of a customer not happy with the way their newly arrived Crate & Barrel furniture looked once it arrived at their home or apartment. I would spend the next few hours completely rearranging customer apartments until they were happy with the way things looked. Customers weren’t aware that the furniture displays at Crate & Barrel were put together by store designers over a period of three days: Day 1 = moving furniture, Day 2 = adding accessories, and Day 3 = adjusting the lighting so that each display was not only a collection of furniture but an experience, a feeling, a new way of living.

During my time at Crate & Barrel furniture, I sold a chair to John Cusack, miscellaneous furniture pieces and accessories to John’s sister Joan Cusack, rode the escalator with Chicago Cub’s Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandburg, and sold a table lamp to 1940s-1950s dancer, singer-actress, Ann Miller, a sale I completely messed up and yet Ann turned out to be the most patient and understanding customer a salesperson could ever ask for.

About 9 months into my Michigan Avenue furniture gig, Barb Reimann showed up again to let me know that: 1. Crate & Barrel still liked me, 2. Ask me whether I still liked Crate & Barrel, 3. Was there anything else at Crate & Barrel I would like to do other than work at the Crate & Barrel furniture store? I don’t remember my response, but shortly thereafter, the head of merchandising & design at Crate & Barrel, Raymond Arenson, showed up to talk to me. Apparently, word had gotten out about me drawing floor plans and that I had an architectural background as well. Since Crate & Barrel had recently started up its own architecture department, I was asked if I might be interested in joining the Crate & Barrel architecture team at Crate & Barrel corporate. I told Raymond no, what I really wanted to do was design product. Unfortunately, Crate & Barrel didn’t have in-house product design, so Raymond suggested that I might start in the architecture department, and if/when product design became a possibility, I could make that transition. I agreed and the next thing I knew I was commuting to Northbrook Illinois each day.

Suddenly, I was an architect again!

Driving to and from Northbrook each day required a car and for the first time in my life, I bought a new car. After a lot of research, I bought a Honda civic hatchback. I only had enough money to buy a car with air conditioning or take a $1000 savings on air conditioning (1/9 of the car’s total cost) and spend it on a $1000 car stereo system. Of course, I bought the $1000.00 CD playing car stereo system and drove throughout the summer months with the windows down, stereo playing, and perspiration evaporating from my brow, as I made my way to and from the city each day by the slower, but more scenic route of Sheridan Road and Lake Shore Drive.

I worked on a number of Crate & Barrel store designs in the Crate & Barrel architecture department, but I’m most proud of the work I did helping to launch Crate & Barrel’s “younger and hipper” brand, CB2. CB2 was one of the most intense experiences of my architectural design career, but also one of the most fulfilling, and along the way, I continued to meet and initiate friendships with more amazing Crate & Barrel people, people that would remain a major part of both my personal and architectural life once I’d left Crate & Barrel and moved on to my next adventures.

Apparently, a survey was circulated to existing Crate & Barrel customers in the mid-1990s and a couple of key insights were gained: Insight 1 was that Crate & Barrel customers were getting older, insight 2 was that Crate & Barrel customers were getting wealthier. The hip, just out of college, young urban professionals that made up Crate & Barrel’s early customer base had remained loyal to Crate & Barrel, but their home furnishing needs had evolved.

Crate & Barrel was interested in re-connecting with the younger & hipper customer that helped to make Crate & Barrel the successful brand that it was back on December 7, 1962 when it opened its 1516 N. Wells Street doors in the then-bohemian Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. The problem was, whereas in 1962, the young and hip had few choices of where to buy affordable modern home furnishings, by the mid-1990s the young and hip had many choices of where to buy affordable modern home furnishings, i.e. Ikea, Pottery Barn, West Elm, and Target to name just a few of the many.

The potential for a new, younger, hipper version of Crate & Barrel was explored. A business plan at that time didn’t exist, but concepts like “as Old Navy is to the Gap so too might CB2 be to Crate & Barrel.” This notion of a younger hipper version of Crate & Barrel was investigated at all levels, i.e. architectural, interior design, fixture design, graphic design, product selection, packaging, and promotion.

CB2 was not originally CB2. CB2 was originally Blueprint, but when we did a legal search on the name Blueprint, a home furnishings store in LA turned up with the name Blueprint. We attempted to negotiate with LA-based Blueprint, but an agreement could not be reached that would allow us to use the Blueprint name in the state of California. By that point our in-house graphic design team had already worked out some of the initial “identity” graphics for Blueprint, but Blueprint needed to be abandoned and a number of alternative names were considered and, this time, more thoroughly researched by our legal team.

Numerous sites were considered for the first CB2 store. Eventually, a site at the intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Grace Street was identified as a possible location. At that time, the site housed a Butera grocery store that was the food store of last resort for North Center residents like me who preferred any other local grocery store option including Jewel, Dominick’s, or Whole Foods. A neighborhood meeting with local residents and the alderman was held to discuss and debate the closing of the Butera store and a small number of the more elderly North Center neighbors were not happy about their Butera being replaced by a CB2.

Architectural drawings and models were presented to community members showing what the proposed CB2 store might look like and how the site would also incorporate a proposed coffee shop and restaurant (negotiations at that time were with local restaurant/brand Wishbone). The larger number of young urban professionals that had recently moved into the community carried the aldermanic ward’s vote and construction of the first CB2 store began shortly thereafter. Ironically, years later, Trader Joe’s would move into the location adjacent to CB2 giving the older residents of North-Center the affordable, local, grocery store they initially desired.

Designing and bringing the first CB2 store into existence was a massive team effort. Designing CB2 was simultaneously designing a brand and imagining how CB2 and all of its products might be presented to the public. I worked closely with Raymond Arenson on the design of the store’s interior, the selection of materials, and the overall concept of a “modular” store. I also worked closely with Bill Scarim of WW Displays on the final detailing and fabrication of CB2’s interior modular components. Interior fixtures were designed to be modular so that fixtures could be fabricated off-site, shipped to a store location, and assembled on site so that CB2 store construction would be less time consuming and less expensive than Crate & Barrel homestores.

Crate & Barrel had an amazing graphic design department headed up by Sandro Franchini. I worked closely with Paula Bodnar and Sandro to integrate CB2 graphics with both the store’s interior and its exterior. Also part of the CB2 graphic design team was Mary Ellen Putignano and Lisa Lappe. As a team, we were even involved in putting together CB2’s advertising campaign. A young advertising duo named Tucker Tapia was hired and in turn, Tucker Tapia hired Marc Hauser as the photographer for the advertisements, which would eventually find their way onto Chicago’s elevated train platforms and the sides of buses as they drove along north-side Chicago routes where we hoped to find our new customers.

As we were working on the first CB2 location, conversations were already starting about where we might open CB2’s second location. I remember sitting at one of the lunch tables at Crate & Barrel corporate and hearing one of my workmates mention that she’d recently purchased a book online from a place called Amazon. I’d never heard of Amazon and up until that point I hadn’t purchased anything online. I went online and looked at Amazon and made my first online purchase. Making an online purchase and receiving my book a few days later in the mail was a revelation and I suggested immediately that our second CB2 store location should be an online store which simultaneously made me worry that my retail architect days might be numbered. It’s really a story for another day, but almost 10 years later I would design and coordinate a project called “Chop Chop Tables,” 500 tables which were eventually sold via the CB2 website/online store.

I loved visiting and shopping in that/”my” first CB2 store. Most of my architectural projects up until the time of CB2 were either private residences or located in distant cities which meant I rarely if ever had the chance to “visit” my projects to better gauge my architectural success and/or observe clients/people enjoying the fruits of my blood-sweat-and-tears labor.

In a January 6, 2010, Crain’s Chicago Business article, it was announced that Crate & Barrel would be closing its original CB2 location at 3757 N. Lincoln Avenue on January 17, 2010 (ironically, my birthday). CB2 as a brand was doing well. Numerous additional locations had opened between 2000 & 2010 and the online store was doing especially well, but for some reason, the location at Lincoln & Grace never attracted the number of customers necessary to sustain itself.

In Chicago (and maybe all cities?) a couple of months before Halloween, vacant storefronts are taken over by temporary Halloween stores. Arriving at the Lincoln & Grace intersection stoplight one early fall morning, my daughter, just old enough, and big enough to be seated next to me in the car, pointed out the car window at what was once my CB2 store and said with a mischievous smile and laugh, “Look daddy, there’s your CB Boo store.”

So take the photographs
And still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf
In good health and good time

Tattoos of memories
And dead skin on trial
For what it's worth
It was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable
But in the end it's right
I hope you had the time of your life

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), Lyrics by Billie Joe Armstrong, Greenday, Nimrod, 1997