The renovation and refresh for Erie on the Park Condominium is an opportunity to elevate not just the atmosphere of the ground floor lobby to current Class-A building standards, but to meet new functional standards for security, mail, packages, and deliveries.
With 22-foot-high ceilings the lobby has prominent street presence with full-height glass walls overlooking the neighboring park, but this also posed a challenge as the vertical surface area is greater than the horizontal surface area. Our solution needed to balance the proportions of the space while negotiating constraints in plan.
Strategic insertions were made that mitigated both compositional and functional needs. Upon entry, you are greeted by an ornamental bronze ribbon which houses the front desk and shields a new expansive package storage area and mailroom. This arrangement allows the front desk attendant to accept and sort frequent deliveries without leaving their station which streamlines the package delivery process, eliminates clutter, and improves security. The ribbon also serves to mask the view to the backside of the neighboring building seen through the large storefront windows.
While the full-height glazing provides ample daylight and the tall ceilings offer prominence to the lobby, the sunlight weathered the existing finishes and did not take advantage of the expansive front façade. To give new life, longevity, and visibility to the lobby a new custom chandelier hangs as a sculptural showpiece in front of the street-facing façade and is surrounded by textured porcelain tiles aligning the tall vertical surfaces. For Erie on the Park, small yet significant maneuvers in design have solidified this condominium as one of the premier residential buildings in River North of Chicago.
