Welcome, 34-Ten! Meet CVG’s First Investment Partner from Chicago
Led by Josh Hutchison, AIA, NCARB, LEED AP, 34-TEN is a boutique architecture firm located in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood. The firm specializes in residential and commercial interior design with an emphasis on rehabilitation projects.
Josh brings his design-build education and DIY approach to every design problem he solves. With a hands-on approach, the 34-TEN team helps clients stretch their budgets in creative ways.
34-TEN began their relationship with CVG through our incubator program for sole proprietors looking to grow. We worked closely with Josh for six months, and in that time, he expanded his team to include one contractor and one full-time employee and is currently seeking another full-time architectural designer.
“I chose to continue working with CVG and become a partner firm as a result of my experience in the incubator program. Within six months, I saw an increased profit due to the restructuring of our fees and implementation of more rigorous time management practices. These changes also allow us to provide a higher quality product to our clients. Managing a small architecture practice is no easy task and I appreciate the effort and insight CVG provides to us. I can't wait to look back at 2021 and see what we have accomplished together,” Hutchison says.
This summer, 34-TEN won an AIA Chicago Small Firm Project Award for the design of Newport Coffee House in downtown Evanston, IL. This awards program recognizes high-quality work from small architectural firms and exceptional small local projects. All projects were designed by firms with 10 or fewer full-time or full-time-equivalent employees. Needless to say, this is the type of award that CVG loves to see our clients receive: small design firms recognized for their excellent work!
“It is clear to us that Josh and 34-Ten will accomplish great things as a firm,” notes CVG’s VP of Marketing, Emily Hall. “Not only is Josh’s portfolio filled with strong projects, but his passion for building a positive firm environment that empowers staff is something he’s acting on in real-time. It’s exciting to be a small part of his success.”
Check out a few highlights from 34-Ten’s portfolio below, and visit their website at https://34-ten.com/.
Newport Coffee House | Evanston, IL
The Newport Coffee House is an interior build-out of an existing commercial space in the heart of downtown Evanston. The design process began with a casual conversation between the architect and the owner in a small café in Andersonville. Part of the discussion covered the elements required for making exceptional coffee. This inspired the notion of precision required in the laboratory setting which helped conceptualize the coffee bar—the focal point of the space. The lab concept also drove the organization of the equipment and the ash wood light rig which highlights and illuminates the work performed at the coffee bar. Pristine white Slayer espresso machines positioned symmetrically on the coffee bar reinforce the notion of a laboratory for coffee.
Secondly, the design team wanted to emphasize the Scandinavian heritage of the owners to counterbalance the sterility inherent with the laboratory concept. This was accomplished by referencing Scandinavian design precedent, primarily the tactile nature and treatment of surfaces by Alvar Alto. A painted wood vertical element was introduced to the space at the retail and café portion of the space. The painted wood vertical element was accomplished using tightly spaced full-length Poplar stair nosings.
McKinley Park Studio | Chicago, IL
34-TEN was approached by a professional photographer to solve a problem; convert an existing 4,700 square foot bow truss warehouse into a photography studio. The existing building was to house staff offices, a client lounge, ample storage, and large open space that can accommodate motion and still photography used in advertising. The solution resulted in dividing the space into two distinct zones: a client zone and a photography zone. Both uses are divided by a 400 square foot mezzanine which allows clients to observe photography from above and provides storage of props below. The existing masonry wall at the north wall of the photography space was removed to allow for the installation of a polycarbonate daylighting system which provides diffuse and even light throughout the day. Simple decisions such as reutilizing existing masonry window and garage door openings allowed the owner to focus resources on new infrastructure such as heating and cooling systems which had not been updated in the building’s 80-year history. Now the building is a bustling business contributing to the revitalization of the McKinley Park neighborhood.
North Center 2-Flat Deconversion | Chicago, IL
North Center has an abundance of great architecture built in the early part of the last century. We were fortunate to bring this orange brick building back to her former glory in addition to extensively renovating the interior. 34-TEN was commissioned to deconvert an early 1900s 2-flat to a single-family home and design the new interior along with a new rear addition. Through design iterations explored with the owner, we developed a floor plan composition that provided all the client’s program requirements within the existing building envelope, omitting the need for an addition. Among modernizing the building interior and finishing the basement, we focused on maximizing natural light by taking advantage of the building’s adjacency to a public alley and through the use of an expansive operable window wall facing the rear yard. The result is a light-filled single-family home which is rare on a standard 25’ wide Chicago lot.
Wicker Park Reconversion | Chicago, IL
The Wicker Park Landmark District is home to Chicago’s best examples of post-fire architecture dating from the 1880s and 1890s. After the Great Depression, the neighborhood fell on hard times, and many of the stately mansions were chopped up into multi-unit buildings. In the late 20th century, ambitious homeowners saw the value in these richly detailed buildings and started restoring or renovating them. We are proud to have had the opportunity to improve this beautiful red brick building which had a long story to tell as it started its life as a mansion, was likely chopped up into tenement housing, haphazardly converted to a 3-flat in the 1990s, and was finally deconverted back to a single-family home by 34-TEN and our clients.
Fortunately, through the many incarnations of this building, some of the original interior and exterior details remained and we worked tirelessly to reincorporate them into this renovation. Original fireplaces, large sliding wood pocket doors, and the original staircase were integrated into a drastic renovation which resulted in a five-bedroom, four-and-a-half bathroom home. A new garage frames an intimate rear yard with the existing house which can be accessed from the living room/kitchen through an operable window wall. This Victorian building can continue its life as a stately home which was made possible through thoughtful design and passionate clients who cherished the building’s history.