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P R O F I L E | K W O N G V O N G L I N O W
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a chip off the old block.
"Ardmore House was our first new construc-
tion project we completed after starting our
office," says Alison Von Glinow, AIA, who
founded Kwong Von Glinow with Lap Chi
Kwong. Though the duo had previously
worked at international architecture firm
Herzog & de Meuron for a combined seven
years, they never worked on the same proj-
ect in the office. "We knew that we would
need to start to create a working relationship
between the two of us and at the same time
we needed to define our set of values," she
continues. Thus began the formation of a
partnership to watch; in 2017, the inaugural
year of their office, they entered several
competitions and came away with many
wins, including for their innovative exercises
in vertical living: the Table Top Apartments
and Towers within a Tower. "What was most
meaningful from this time," Von Glinow notes,
N THE WINDY CITY, the birthplace of
Chicago School standouts, steel-
Aframe constructionists and postwar
modernists, even solidly good archi-
tecture risks being overlooked amid
so much of the truly great. And yet, in the
residential space, emergent architecture
practice Kwong Von Glinow has turned
the current architectural landscape upside
down with its prize-winning project Ardmore
House.
Bordering an alleyway on a traditional
Chicago lot, Kwong Von Glinow's fresh,
grey-scale dual-tone form represents a
3,100-square-foot break with residential
norms. Featuring an atypical living arrange-
ment, the house, which was designed to
engage with its urban context, has bedrooms
on the middle floor and living spaces on the
second floor (with utility spaces at ground
level). Not an entirely novel concept, but
unique in its neighborhood. Fueled by the
vision of the architects behind it, Ardmore
House is many things—progressive,
future-facing, exploratory. It is not, however,
