Smuggling the Familiar

“We almost called this lecture ‘Enjoy Architecture,’” Lap Chi Kwong remarked, as he and Alison Von Glinow—co-principals of Chicago design office Kwong Von Glinow—introduced their presentation at the Rice Design Alliance, on occasion of their receiving the 2023 Spotlight Award. They eventually settled on “Some of This, Some of That,” a phrase Kwong said reflects their freewheeling approach to design. Sprinting through slides of their work, the pair dropped buzzwords like “accessible,” “legible,” and “understandable.” Highlights included the Ardmore House and Swiss Consulate; both are in Chicago and feature loving, intelligently resolved details. But these largely private spaces, with trendy contemporary materials and finishes, felt almost too familiar.

The feeling was not accidental. In their talk, Kwong and Von Glinow also emphasized “the vernacular,” the subject of an exhibition they produced about the morphology of single-family homes. But the vernacular influences also seep in surreptitiously. The Table Top Apartments, a speculative system of housing based on “bor…