If you have abundant natural light in your home,
you treasure it
The beauty and warmth of natural light is unequalled, moving artists, writers and poets to create their great works throughout the ages. If you have abundant natural light in your home, you treasure it. But the sun’s magic can be fleeting. Such was the case with our client’s home in the River North neighborhood.
At midday, and then again late afternoon, the sun pours like liquid gold into the modest interior space we had to work with. The massive walls which soar 30 stories skyward funnel blazing shafts of light down and through adjoining spaces, splashing off of railings and windows, plants and wood. Slanting through the garden, the light spreads across surfaces almost noticeably, until finally departing and leaving the gloaming to follow.
We kept this interior garden simple, generating privacy with a metal-and-ipe pergola for the therapy spa but largely taking best advantage of the sun’s offerings during specific windows of time by keeping things uncluttered. Furniture from Gloster and JANUS et Cie softens the hard surfaces and offers private space for reading. An economical plant palette of upright hornbeam and groundcover plantings contrasts with colorful freestanding planters filled with seasonal plants and decorative stems.
And late in the evening, as man-made light illuminates the garden, the sun’s beauty lives on in the knowledge that it will return again tomorrow as it has for millenia.
