I was raised in a very design-oriented family. My dad worked as an architect before his retirement, and my mom was an interior designer, so I've always had a bit of an an eye for design.
I had hoped to follow in my dad's footsteps and become an architect, but for a variety of reasons college and I just didn't work out and I never got my degree. I regret it a bit, but it's all water under the bridge at this point.
My failure to get an architectural degree did not, however, prevent me from getting into the business. Before I quit to go into a career of babysitting PC tech support, I had worked as an architectural drafter for about seventeen years. Even today there are still times when I sorely miss it and question my wisdom having given it up. When I was producing architectural drawings, I always felt like I'd accomplished something at the end of the day. And when the things I drew were actually built…it was a tremendous source of personal pride and satisfaction.
During my junior year of high school I was perusing one of my dad's architectural magazines, and I ran across a spread documenting a new development on the Chicago shoreline called Harbor Point.
I was in love.
This was my high school vision of the future, what living in the 21st century would be like.
Somehow in those pre-internet days, I managed to locate the address for the sales office and wrote to request more information. They sent me a beautiful portfolio that included an overall building floor plan, prices, and brochures for each of the individual units. As I recall the units ranged in price from $50-$70K (a lot for those days). Unfortunately, everything except the overall floor plan was thrown out in one of my various purges. How it managed to survive all these years speaks volumes about the persistence of youthful dreams, I suppose.
(click to embiggen)
Back in the day, I often dreamt of owning one of the units with the curving glass windows, overlooking the cityscape far below, lights dimmed low and jazz softly playing in the background. (I seem to recall George Benson's Breezin' being the soundtrack at that time.)
It's still a beautiful building in my opinion, and with the advent of the internet finding pictures of it was fairly easy. But it wasn't until the other day that on a whim I actually found pictures of what the interiors looked like. Squee! Apparently there are a quite a few units available for sale. Despite the rather dated luminous ceilings in the kitchens, it would appear they've aged fairly well.
These units so fired my imagination that several years after receiving the floor plans I designed a house around one of the curving-window units. The layout was pill shaped, raised one floor off the ground (to provide garage space) with a central atrium that I envisioned being open to a huge skylight above. The hand drawn paper architectural floor plan is one of very few out the dozens of dream houses I designed over the years that's survived.
If I ever won the lottery, I'd snatch one of those bitches up in a heartbeat (most are selling for well under $500K), even if it meant only living there part time. (I can barely tolerate a Denver winter. Can you imagine me in Chicago?!? Me neither.)
