An Interior Designer Helps His Mother Turn Her 1960s Chicago Apartment Into a Colorful Haven

From the wall of windows in Eleni Katsarou’s 33rd-floor Chicago condo, Lake Michigan looks like an ocean: flat, endless, and constantly intriguing. That view is what drew Eleni, who grew up in Athens gazing at the Aegean Sea, to purchase the two-bedroom unit in 2016. It was the 50th anniversary of her arrival in the United States. Newly retired from her job as a professor, with children grown and gone, she was ready to trade her sprawling Victorian in the historic Ravenswood neighborhood for something completely different. "I loved the building, and I loved where it was situated, right on the water," she says of the 1968 concrete tower.