36 DIGS.NET
| 8.20.2021
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P R O F I L E | K A R A M A N N
MY ETHOS AS a designer is to always be authentic to yourself
and to your clients," says interior designer Kara Mann,
who knows no other way, frankly, designing the interiors
of a private estate in Winnetka precisely in this spirit. The
founder and creative director of her eponymous practice
KARA MANN, with offices in Chicago, New York and Los
Angeles, Mann is one of the most gifted designers of her
generation whose refined, slightly maverick eye has led to an array
of collaborations across the commercial and residential sectors,
including a Chicago project with Gwyneth Paltrow's goop, in
addition to her collections for Baker Furniture and CB2, and her
own line of utilitarian housekeeping essentials, KEPT.
This particular residential project is another collaboration for
Mann, with local Chicago firm Northworks Architecture. New
construction completed for a family of four with a love of travel,
the house is straight from the Mann mold—fresh, unpredictable
and almost perfectly restrained. It is, like her other work—which
one finds splashed across the pages of The New York Times,
Elle Décor, Architectural Digest, and Vogue on a fairly consistent
basis, as well as in a number of design books—a manifesta-
"
tion of her innate understanding of how to juxtapose design
elements in unconventional ways. Her flair for materiality and
architecture, and more importantly her feel for these things,
are all present in what is effectively a lakehouse set on the
Northshore of Lake Michigan. "But in keeping with her penchant
for the unexpected, "I wanted to stay true to this without being
obviously thematic," Mann says. "Each space within this house
takes on a coastal tone. You can't ignore the lake and its pres-
ence is in every room." You just won't find it overt nautical tropes,
like ropey wall hangings and light fixtures shaped like portholes.
