Mar­tin Felsen: Chica­go has this cul­ture of archi­tec­ture — every­one knows some­thing about it or is inter­est­ed in it — which makes it dif­fer­ent from New York or Los Ange­les. And it doesn’t have the bou­tique prac­tices like those cities do. After we start­ed build­ing some of our own projects here, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of forg­ing our own iden­ti­ty here felt real.

Sarah Dunn: When you’re young and a lit­tle naïve, you prac­tice with a cer­tain free­dom. For me that meant sur­vey­ing the envi­ron­ment and ques­tion­ing why things are the way they are, then propos­ing an alternative. 

Felsen: We had two ideas at the begin­ning. One had to do with our sur­prise that Chica­go takes water out of the Great Lakes and relo­cates it out of the city, dump­ing it like waste. We gave a pre­sen­ta­tion to the may­or, which felt like unbe­liev­able access for a young archi­tect, and he shared our belief that we should hold onto that resource. So, we start­ed think­ing about infra­struc­ture and work­ing on some groovy design projects. The sec­ond idea also con­cerned Lake Michi­gan, which was to cre­ate an eco­log­i­cal trade zone for com­pa­nies that use large amounts of water. That opened a lot of doors for us in urban design. 

Felsen: Work­ing across scales was real­ly exhil­a­rat­ing and inter­est­ing. It gave us a chance to stretch what archi­tec­ture can be and what archi­tec­ture can do. 

Dunn: The small­er-scale projects offer us more con­trol and speed. They also feel more impor­tant to the few­er peo­ple who are involved in them. This all speaks to our desire to pro­duce a project that a client loves, while also let­ting us pur­sue ideas we’re always inter­est­ed in, like form and proportion. 

Felsen: The small­er-scale projects offer us more con­trol and speed. They also feel more impor­tant to the few­er peo­ple who are involved in them. This all speaks to our desire to pro­duce a project that a client loves, while also let­ting us pur­sue ideas we’re always inter­est­ed in, like form and proportion. 

Dunn: We’re always try­ing to envi­sion new worlds: new pos­si­bil­i­ties for how peo­ple live, or for sup­port­ing the lifestyles they have. When giv­en more free­dom by a trust­ing client like Wolf-Gor­don, we do have a ten­den­cy to be more play­ful. But uni­ver­sal­ly we’re in con­ver­sa­tion with archi­tec­ture and the city, think­ing about the way things are and how they can be bet­ter. Right now, for exam­ple, we’re work­ing on a series of hous­es in which there are very typ­i­cal typolo­gies near­by, and instead we’re orga­niz­ing the build­ings to form court­yards. We’re won­der­ing how that pro­duces a new set of pos­si­bil­i­ties for occu­py­ing an inte­ri­or, for con­nect­ing to nature and your sur­round­ings, and for expe­ri­enc­ing one another. 

Felsen: But when you’re doing this world build­ing, you can nev­er say that things have to be bet­ter — imply­ing that they’re bad now. Peo­ple don’t want to hear that kind of crit­i­cism lobbed at their cur­rent lived expe­ri­ence. Change is hard enough. 

Felsen: What I’m most excit­ed about is how we dynam­i­cal­ly por­tray the mate­ri­al­i­ty of Wolf-Gor­don. It hap­pens at two dif­fer­ent scales, pick­ing up on our ear­li­er talk about scale. In the most low-tech way pos­si­ble, a vis­i­tor can expe­ri­ence indi­vid­ual prod­ucts as well as Wolf-Gordon’s vision just by walk­ing the length of the show­room. It’s going to be real­ly interesting.

Dunn: I think so, now more than ever. We sur­faced ideas that oth­er peo­ple were think­ing about, because we weren’t propos­ing any­thing that wasn’t pos­si­ble. (For some of our com­pe­ti­tion entries, we have pro­posed things for which the tech­nol­o­gy didn’t exist.) Some peo­ple thought we were insane at the time, but most peo­ple are now con­ver­sant in those ideas. And we con­tin­ue to flesh them out ourselves. 

Dunn: Peo­ple don’t like the word insane, or naïve, or hope­ful, or open, or ide­al­is­tic. These words are under assault. But you need to stay insane! You want to engage with the world, and the only way to do it every day is to look at the glass as half full. We don’t con­scious­ly cul­ti­vate that atti­tude — maybe that’s how we are, nat­u­ral­ly — but some­thing about Chica­go makes it con­scious. This city has a his­to­ry of remak­ing itself again and again, and when you get to know a lot of dif­fer­ent peo­ple, there is a pos­i­tive, we’re-in-this-together approach. I would say Chica­go pro­motes a bold and col­lec­tivist approach, and we’ve made it our own.