REspace Design LLC

12/05/2025

MERGER ANNOUNCEMENT!

We are proud to officially announce our strategic merger with Henderson Associates Architects. Innovative thinking and a keen understanding of cutting-edge architectural technologies meet a decades-long tradition of smart, cost-effective, solution-oriented design.

Visit our newly designed website to read more: https://hendersonarchitects.com/hello-world-were-50-years-old-and-still-growing/

And follow us at our new home on Facebook, Henderson Associates Architects, Inc. Alternatively, peep us on Instagram, at Henderson Associates (https://www.instagram.com/hendersonassociates/?hl=en), or show us some love on LinkedIn, at Henderson Associates Architects, Inc. (https://www.linkedin.com/company/henderson-associates-architects).

17/04/2025

If you're a Cards fan, you might not like to admit it, but Chicago has some good points. One of them, however, is at risk of disappearing. And it's one of only five Frank Lloyd Wright Prairie-style homes in the city.

The J.J. Walser Jr. House made the “Chicago 7” list created by Preservation Chicago, a nonprofit that advocates for local architecture, because it has been vacant for several years and is in desperate need of repairs.

Created in 1903, the Walser house “features overhanging eaves and an open floor plan full of built-in furniture and art glass windows. It was part of Wright's attempt to apply Prairie-style architecture to affordable structures, and it cost only $4,000 (about $150,000 today).”

The home was lovingly maintained by its last owners (a couple) until the last remaining spouse died in 2019. According to the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy, “every part of this house needs attention.”

Because the home was designated as a Chicago Landmark in 1981 and subsequently listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013, it is protected from demolition.

Read more about the Walser home's present and near-future here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/historic-frank-lloyd-wright-home-added-to-list-of-endangered-architecture-in-chicago-180986262/

The J.J. Walser Jr. House, one of five Wright-designed homes in the city, has fallen into disrepair, prompting calls for preservation

25/03/2025

The site where Freedom Riders on May 20, 1961, stepped off a Greyhound bus to an angry mob brandishing bats, hammers, and pipes—in Montgomery, Alabama—was under threat of government cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), but the Civil Rights landmark has been removed from the GSA buildings-to-shutter list.

As of this writing, the Montgomery Bus Station and the Freedom Rides Museum is safe from DOGE's attacks. Fox54 reports that Alabama Senator Katie Britt, as well as other local politicians, have intervened. Britt said, "I have been in communication with the Administration and this has been resolved. The Montgomery Bus Station and Freedom Rides Museum will not be on GSA’s non-core list.”

When the sale of the building was first announced around March 6, 2025, Alabama representatives Shomari C. Figures and Terri Sewell sent a letter for the immediate removal of the Freedom Rides Museum from the U.S. General Services Administration’s (GSA) list of “non-core” properties for sale.

The Montgomery bus station and now museum, you'll recall, is wrapped up in a tumultuous week in U.S. history. On May 14, 1961, a bus of young Freedom Riders, who aimed to challenge segregation rules on public transportation, was firebombed in Anniston, Alabama, nearly killing dozens trapped on the bus by a purposefully barricaded door. So, by the time a different group of Freedom Riders arrived in Montgomery, many had already written their wills. This group included future U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who was seriously injured by the KKK-led mob the police ignored, and John Seigenthaler, an aide to then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. Siegenthaler was knocked unconscious, and many others were hurt.

For now, however, justice has prevailed and the Civil Rights landmark museum and bus station—part of the National Parks Civil Rights Trail—has been preserved.

Sources:
https://www.alreporter.com/2025/03/06/historic-montgomery-bus-station-freedom-riders-museum-part-of-doge-ordered-sell-off/
and
https://www.rocketcitynow.com/article/news/state/alabama-icons-saved-freedom-rides-museum-bus-station-off-federal-sale-list-katie-britt-shomari-figures-teri-sewell/525-57d08e41-9ea9-42df-ad08-cc82fbd0d6a7
and
https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/20
and
https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/may/14

11/03/2025

MILLENNIUM HOTEL

St. Louis' skyline is set to be transformed.

St. Louis magazine reports on a Feb. 19 update on the site of the former Millennium Hotel, which has sat vacant since 2014; the Gateway Arch Park Foundation and partners have tapped The Cordish Companies to lead the $670M development to “transform the site . . . into a major downtown destination.”

The vacuum where the hotel stood “would be replaced with 1.3 million square feet of residential, office, commercial, cultural, and public spaces. Plans call for upscale housing, Class A office space, an amphitheater, a food hall, event space, and a potential home for [the] Gateway Arch National Park’s archives.”

Although they are Baltimore-based, Cordish is no stranger to the Lou—or to Kansas City. In St. Louis, they were co-developers of Ballpark Village, which includes One Cardinal Way, the Live! by Loews hotel, and the PwC Pennant Building, “among other amenities to the area flanking Busch Stadium,” plus Kansas City's Power & Light District.

Next steps were being reported as: a Feb. 25 board meeting of The Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority, where the project will undergo review. “There is no announced timeline for the groundbreaking yet.”

When more definitive news on the Millennium is available, we'll share it.

In the meantime, you can check out some neat renderings, and more of the story by Mike Miller, here:

The St. Louis skyline could soon change.

10/03/2025

WHERE HOMES MEET WILD AREAS

The two largest fires in Los Angeles County this year (the Palisades and Eaton fires) together have killed 28 people as of late January. Beyond that untold and incalculable human suffering, more than 16,000 homes and other structures have been damaged or otherwise destroyed, often razing entire neighborhoods.

This well-researched article by the nonprofit Cal Matters takes a look at something that sounds kinda cutesy but is nonetheless a vital factor to consider in the overall debate about climate change and wildfires: that term is WUI, pronounced woo-ee, which shortens from “wildland urban interface,” which California has a 7-million-acre patch of. This means 1 in 3 Californians live at the blurred transition zone of neighborhoods into nature.

“And [the WUI is] also where California has been building homes for decades—nearly 45% of homes built between 1990 and 2020 are located in places with lots of vegetation ready to fuel a fire.”

That, in just one month (January), 2025 has already attained the rank of second most-destructive fire year in California history is significant and nail-biting at the very least.
Explore more of this sign of our environmental times, wildfire mitigation vis-a-vis our communities, here: https://calmatters.org/environment/wildfires/2025/01/la-county-fires-wildland-urban-interface/ #:~:text=In%20just%20a%20single%20month,in%20the%20Los%20Angeles%20area.



________________________________________________________________

A Jan. 10, 2025, photo of the Palisades fire in California. Image by Jules Hotz, CalMatters.

07/03/2025

With an expected $7M repair pricetag and delays due to scaffolding safety over its waterfall, Frank Lloyd Wright's famed nearly 90-year-old Fallingwater home has been dubbed “stallingwater,” forcing the cancellation of a March 2025 visitor tour of the platforms.

That tour would have “include[d] access to the platforms—putting visitors in hard hats farther out over the waterfall than any other members of the public, ever.” In return, the visitors paid about $90 per pop in anticipation of peeking over the parapet walls around the balconies to the stream roughly 50 feet below (depending on which rocks you measure from). No word on whether visitors would've signed a release on damages should any one of them have slipped. [Side note: No one has died in a fall during the almost 90 years of Fallingwater's existence.]

The famed home is owned by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and has experienced a myriad of leaks over the years owning to a Wright refusal to use flashing. Fallingwater’s preservation architect, Pamela Jerome (of Architectural Preservation Studio in New York) indicates that “Wright could have called for copper flashing where roofs or terraces intersect walls. The flashing would have kept water from penetrating the walls. But Wright didn’t like seeing a few inches of exposed copper at the base of each protected wall, so he avoided flashing.” Ever since then, the multiterraced home has fought water battles.

The terrace-repair project is estimated to cost $7M, with an uncertain timeline, though visitors can still see repair work “throughout the house” despite not being allowed on scaffolding. That pricetag is about 40 times the cost of the house's original construction in 1937.

Wright also used less rebar than was perhaps called for, resulting in an even-more-massive repair about 25 years ago. “Back then (1999), engineers determined that several of the decks projecting out over the waterfall were drooping. The corner of one terrace was an incredible 7 inches below where it had been when the house was built. All reinforced concrete members bend a bit, the engineer Robert Silman explained at the time. There is an initial droop, often pronounced, on the day the concrete is poured, and a slower bending that occurs mainly in the building’s first year.” The bending was unending, however, Silman said in 1999. So that problem was addressed.

This fascinating article looks, too, at the 26-inch parapet walls (today's code calls for 42 inches).

Read more of Fallingwater's plight here: https://www.realtor.com/news/unique-homes/frank-lloyd-wrights-fallingwater-is-leaking-inside-the-7-million-job-to-fix-it/

Work is underway to make the architect’s most famous home watertight—a project that is expected to cost about 40 times more than its entire construction budget.

28/02/2025

URBAN AGRICULTURE

Architecture intertwines with agriculture in this globe-trawling appreciation of structures that returns city-dwellers once again to a relationship that's closer to the land and food cultivation. From several countries of Asia to Austria to Pennsylvania or Switzerland, these structures are situating urban populations to become more self-sufficient in food production. Nineteenth-century Paris is cited as just one city that's ripe for the turnaround to self-sufficiency; back then, the City of Light produced about 14% of its own fruits, herbs, and vegetables, but today that number hovers at only 2%.

This Architizer opinion-educational piece makes the (convincing, we think) case for urban farming like so: “Parks have become decorative, and edible planting is seen [only] as a community initiative rather than a public necessity. However, shifting climate conditions, resource instability, and rising food costs are making people think differently. Productive landscapes are returning, and these eleven projects [show] all the ways that we can bring growing produce into the built environment.”

An award-winning former sugar factory, transformed into a closed-loop circular village in Taiwan, leads the green list. “Where the Pollinators Are” offers a revolutionary and visually striking return to pollinated landscapes in State College, Pa., courtesy of Didier Design Studio.

It is no wondered this project nabbed a jury winner prize in Sustainable Landscape/Planning from a previous Architizer A+ Award session, what with its eye-catching direct incorporation of pollination into the sculpture-based habitats crafted from perforated steel and reclaimed timber with native plantings galore.

Sustainability and aesthetics, practical food production and pleasing spaces can and do go together in this appreciation of urban food designs and architecture worldwide. We hope you'll be inspired when you feast your eyes on all these ag-loving, city-minded greenspaces: https://architizer.com/blog/inspiration/collections/cultivating-change-architecture-food-production/



--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Photo of "Where the Pollinators Are," in State College, Pennsylvania. Designed by Didier Design Studio. Photo by Rob Cardillo.

27/02/2025

Our little “secret” of Edwardsville, Illinois, is becoming steadily better-known, being picked up by national media like Islands, whose article dubs ours a “timeless town” that's a hub of restaurants, theatre, college, notable homes like the 1820 Federalist-style Stephenson House and others located in the St. Louis Street historic area. More than a springboard to St. Louis—in our opinion—Edwardsville has a lot to offer on its own, with a long-running community market (Goshen), strong arts and recreation scenes, kids' activities, local shops, nice libraries and restaurants, and enough coziness to feel like you still know your neighbors. Although we're humble, we'll gladly accept the praise; thank you, Islands.com, for giving us our star turn among your cruises, destinations, and traveling guides!

More: https://www.islands.com/1762896/illinois-edwardsville-timeless-town-near-missouri-border-hub-restaurants-shops-historic-sites/

This town at the Illinois-Missouri border is full of historical sites, chic boutiques, and great restaurants. Explore nearby St. Louis, hiking trails, and more.

25/02/2025

Now nearly 70 years old, Window to the World out of Chicago was founded by Inland Steel Chairman Edward Ryerson “and other civic leaders with the goal of providing educational television content to the city,” according to WTTW's mission statement.

But today, we want to focus on WTTW's overview of the “oft-overlooked”: namely Black architects and designers and their “contributions to the city’s historic architectural legacy . . . a story less told for too long.”

A couple innovators you might already know lead the discussion: “Walter T. Bailey, Illinois’ first licensed Black architect, who designed the striking, Streamline Moderne [a 1930s offshoot of Art Deco] First Church of Deliverance at 4315 S. Wabash Avenue in 1939; to architect and engineer Georgia Louise Harris Brown, who worked out the structural calculations that hold aloft Mies van der Rohe’s revolutionary steel-and-glass towers at 860-880 Lake Shore Drive, built in 1951.”

The list is further filled out by John Moutoussamy, who designed a rich plethora of modernist Chicagoland buildings, but who is perhaps best known for designing the 11-story former Ebony Jet Building on Michigan Avenue in 1971.

Another highlight of highlights is the Black-owned architecture firm Moody Nolan and its Chicago office, which “designed [a] handsome brick-and-glass addition and expansion of the Harvey, Illinois, public library . . . built in 2016.” The library contains several environmental features such as stormwater retention landscaping and energy-efficiency measures.

Take a look at the full Black History/Heritage Month (BHM) list here: https://www.wttw.com/playlist/2022/02/28/black-architects-chicagoland

Black people’s contributions to Chicago's historic architectural legacy have been a story less told for too long. Architecture photographer and writer Lee Bey celebrates a few of them around Chicagoland.

21/02/2025

"GREEN" DESIGNS

We are fond of sharing sustainable, biophilic, net-zero, regenerative, or carbon-neutral designs and architecture solutions around here. But what exactly does this lingo mean? What is sustainability in architecture and design?

You can land here and go directly for the Architizer gallery, but please consider reading their link, too, which gives a primer of sorts of “Architecture 101” lesson in these terms that, if you haven't heard of or lived with them yet, you might have even worked, shopped, or otherwise felt the benefits of these buildings across educational, healthcare, retail, hotel/airport, museum/cultural, or other life experiences.

Sustainable or green architecture is nothing less than a hope for a better future for our society:
https://architizer.com/blog/practice/details/what-is-sustainability-in-architecture-and-design/

Have a wonderful weekend!

Low carbon, nature positive, planet-friendly: brush up on the basics of what makes sustainable architecture sustainable.

19/02/2025

FREE MASONRY WEBINAR

Architects, developers, engineers, property managers, general contractors, and preservationists, this one's for you.

This Thursday (Feb. 20), Landmarks Illinois (LI) offers a free Zoom webinar on masonry facade repair strategies in adaptive reuse starting at 8:30 a.m. CST.

Sustainability and housing resiliency are foundations of the discussion.

The event flyer says, "Through project case studies, the presenters, which include an interdisciplinary team of designers and masonry contractor representatives, will demonstrate best practices for a successful approach to masonry repair." One of the case studies is the Old Post Office in Chicago.

The approximately half-day virtual learning experience also fosters "understand[ing] the importance of collaboration between the contractor and architect/engineer to deliver successful projects that achieve project goals, schedule, and budget."

Finally, continuing education credits are offered for this free event.

Find out more at the flyer, including how to register:https://www.landmarks.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Final-2025-IMI-education-event-Flyer.pdf



__________________________________________________________________

Chicago's Old Main Post Office was built in 1921 in the Classic Art Deco style (photo from https://www.landmarks.org/old-main-post-office/ ). In its prime, the building laid claim to the "largest post office in the world," seeing some 19 million letters pass through its doors daily.

18/02/2025

From cross-laminated timber (CLT) to a renewable composite known as Renco, formed into Lego-like blocks, the construction and building industry is stepping up to confront its carbon emissions.

This article highlights a few different materials and companies working to reduce the environmental impact of construction.

Take Renco, whose blocks consist of up to 40% repurposed materials, including resin and fiberglass. “Since 2011, more than 200 buildings in Turkey have been built using Renco blocks, which fit together like Lego bricks and are secured with glue.”

In addition to being Cat 5 hurricane-resistant and battle-proven in earthquake-prone Turkey, the bricks reportedly weigh “about 80% less than concrete, meaning more of it can be transported per truck, and also [have] 82% less embodied carbon than structural steel.” In 2023 in the U.S., an apartment building went up in Palm Springs with the Renco bricks.

Renco USA's manager also says it is 100% recyclable.

Sustainable timber and artificial reefs are also gaining a foothold, as is a tool to measure embodied carbon, the latter created by construction company Skanska USA. The Embodied Carbon in Construction (EC3) tool allows construction project managers to assess a project's emissions, which is invaluable since construction contributes about 37% of Earth's global greenhouse emissions (https://www.buildingtransparency.org/tools/).

No matter what the near future holds, owing to switches in government, climate change mitigation is here to stay—for the good of all humankind: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/17/construction-industry-tackles-climate-change-with-wood-lego-style-bricks-new-materials.html