Chicago Law Offices
A challenging curve becomes a corporate office’s biggest asset.
This Chicago law office spans seven floors of an ellipse-shaped building. While the unique architecture makes the offices a visual standout in corporate environments, the long curved hallways presented a decorating challenge and also a navigational one, since every point along each floor’s twin corridors looked identical. The interior designers originally envisioned covering the walls with a vertical striped fabric. They asked Pretorius Studio to create a hand-painted take on that idea.
Turning a challenging form into functional flair.
Since traditional framed artwork couldn’t be hung on the arced walls, any painting solution would need to be curved along the surface. Pretorius Studio created a spectrum of different execution concepts from abstract to highly modern, based on the designers’ initial inspiration. From that range, the team zeroed in on the lively abstract direction we developed.
The design team asked us to infuse the space with color and a sense of movement, so we incorporated a vertically striped design of gradated colors that sweep from cool to warm across the passageways, creating vibrant energy along with navigational cues. The tones ranged from deep blue to grass green on the north side of the building and from cobalt blue to violet on the south side.
Using these two color ranges, we created a suite of four 7' × 38' oil paintings for each hallway and replicated the set by hand for all seven floors. With their large scale, we started the canvases on our studio floor, then moved them to the wall for detailed painting. We installed the 28 canvases one floor at a time. With the renovation contractor, we worked by a precise schedule to minimize disruption for the busy law firm.
“We created each canvas individually, drawing on our experience to readily replicate them precisely across the series. We’ve got our artistic process down to a science.”
