Wrightwood 659's Growing Pains

Tadao Ando's first building in the United States, completed in 1997, was a single-family house designed for Fred Eychaner, located on a quiet residential street in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood. In typical Ando fashion, the house he designed was primarily concrete and glass—an introverted house that presented a blank concrete wall and metal door to the street. Surprisingly, Eychaner let more eyes look upon the house about twenty years later, when, working again with Ando, he converted an adjacent four-story apartment building into Wrightwood 659, an exhibition space run by his Alphawood Foundation that is dedicated to architecture and socially engaged art. The venue has been a success since it opened in 2018, such that Eychaner is looking to expand it on parcels on the other side of the Ando house.

Enter WGN Investigates, part of the local television station's news division, which recently aired a story about a neighbor, Lisa Berron, who has not been willing to sell to Eychaner, even as the owners of the two other units in her building did. Two residential buildings between her condominium and the Ando house have already been demolished and, as the WGN video below indicates, construction is already underway on foundation work for the expansion. Berron sued in March to stop construction of Wrightwood 659's expansion, since it would rise higher than her unit and therefore block light and views. 

While it is unclear if there are sufficient grounds in the ongoing lawsuit to block the expansion or lead to a redesign, the WGN Investigates story does broach the possibility that political donations from Eychaner, a billionaire businessman and philanthropist, to Berron's alderman, Timmy Knudsen, have kept the politician from aiding Berron in her lawsuit. For his part, Eychaner told WGN, through a spokesperson, “this project required zero approvals from the alderman’s office and is being built 100% under what existing zoning allows for the property.”