Condo Living: The History Channeler

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FOR ARTISTS AND ARCHITECTS, inspiration often comes in the form of a blank canvas.

Not so for John Ronan. When the renowned Chicago architect drew up a proposal to convert D.C.'s historic Yale Steam Laundry Building into condos, he found his muse in the early 20th-century building's cracked brick walls, exposed framing and long history. For more than 70 years, local hotels and restaurants sent their linens here (first by horse-drawn carriages and later by truck) to be washed, starched and pressed.

In its new incarnation, the building will hold high-ceilinged, sleekly urban condos. Prices in Historic Yale, the portion of the complex Ronan designed, start in the $420,000s for an 800-square-foot one-bedroom unit.

Ronan, 44, has recently become something of a phenomenon in the architecture world.
His firm has been awarded several high-profile contracts against some tough competition. He beat out international names like Peter Eisenman and Pritzker Architecture Prize winner Thom Mayne for a school project in Perth Amboy, N.J., and the Gary Comer Youth Center he designed for Chicago's South Side was met with critical acclaim.

Since Ronan has brought his talents to D.C., we took this opportunity to chat with him about design — at the Yale and beyond.

» EXPRESS: How would you describe your aesthetic?
» RONAN: I would call it minimal materialism. I'm very much about the experience of the materials. You have to consider carefully what material it is and really work with that — because you want it to communicate, first of all. Then there's this sensual component. How does it make you feel? The mood of a space is very important.

» EXPRESS: What mood were you going for with your design for the renovation of the Yale Steam Laundry?
» RONAN: The building had a very rich physical history. It had a very unusual structure inside. There are vaulted ceilings on the ground floor and there's exposed — but very irregular — wood framing on the floors above.
The interior walls are glazed brick, for the most part, and they're kind of pockmarked.

It's gotten this patina over time that's very interesting and unusual, so the strategy was to preserve as much of that as possible, because once you erase that, it's gone forever.

The idea was to insert the new pieces of the program [modern kitchens, bathrooms, closets, etc.] almost like furniture that fit inside the space. It's like you're leaving the existing shell pretty much intact — with all its imperfections — and then you're putting in this very clean, well-made furniture inside the space. The resulting units are the sum-total of these two physical realities: the old masonry shell and this new program.

» EXPRESS: Besides the stainless-steel rooftop swimming pool, what other elements did you add to the historic space?
» RONAN: We added skylights in a lot of the areas because I think natural light is so important. It gets back to this issue of materiality because you need a certain type of light on that material to bring it alive.

» EXPRESS: The Washington, D.C., firm BBG-BBGM also worked on this project — preserving the exterior of the original Yale building and designing the two new condo buildings that flank it. What was it like working with another architect who was in a separate city?
» RONAN: We worked pretty closely, actually. I corresponded with them daily about different issues — everything from finishes to light fixtures and so forth as the construction is going on.

Of all my out-of-town projects, [Yale Steam Laundry is] the easiest one because I can hop on a plane in the morning and be there by 10 o'clock in the morning, spend all day there and come home. Most of them aren't that easy.

» EXPRESS: How is designing condominiums different from doing houses or businesses?
» RONAN: [With condos, it's] a lot about being very intelligent about your use of space, because you usually don't have a lot to give up.

How do you make something really special? I think Yale is an example of how you make something special when there's a glut of condominiums on the market. How do you differentiate these things? Yale's an example of something that's really special because that kind of character, that patina. You know you can't build that. You can't make it. It just has to happen over time. It's about preserving it.

» EXPRESS: Green design seems to be the hot new thing. Have you had to change the way you think about architecture to incorporate some of these new eco ideals?
» RONAN: [Green design is] an important part of my work. We're lucky here in Chicago, because the mayor really pushes it, too. That's made it a lot easier to propose these things to is] always a part of every project, but the fact is often there's a [cost] premium for these things that an owner has to buy into.

I think the culture is what's really changing. Owners are more receptive to [green design], and they're actually demanding it. I think everybody recognizes that we can't go on this way. We need to start changing the way we do things. That current has brought a lot of new energy into architecture and really invigorated it.

» EXPRESS: What's the biggest trend in residential design? What will we be seeing more of?
» RONAN: There are a couple of things going on. One is the green thing — a growing interest in sustainability both as it relates to materials but other things as well, [like] building systems, how you're heating and cooling the space.

For me, there's an interest integrating landscape into the architecture. So, no longer thinking about the building as isolated or separate from the landscape, but really thinking about them as two sides of a coin or the integration of those two things and what kind of dialogue they create.

And I suppose the third thing would be technological advances — some of these very intelligent appliances and home systems that manage energy usage and make it easier for the people who live there.

» EXPRESS: You have plans for turning the Old Post Office in Chicago into a mausoleum. Why?
» RONAN: That was the largest post office in the world at one point. And it was because a lot of the catalog companies were located in Chicago where they sent their catalogs out from — like Sears and Montgomery Ward.

They have this huge Old Post Office, and it's a just a colossal building. It's over 3 million square feet, and it's been sitting dormant for a long time. I was asked to present a proposal to the mayor of Chicago for how the city might reuse that space. The city's running out of cemetery space, and I think that land could probably be put to better use for parks and so forth.

So, the idea was to really use this building as kind of a municipal mausoleum, or burial site.

In a way, it's a bit of a critique on how we remember people or how that whole aspect of life plays out in Western society. People don't want to think about that and, as a result, it's kind of unsatisfying, I would say. So, I think there needs to be a more honorific way to remember our fellow citizens.

And then there's an idea in there about how the river might play a role in making a ritual that might become unique to the city to really define Chicago as a place.

Written by Express contributor Julia Beizer
Photos courtesy Todd A. Smith