How They Pulled It Off: A Triangular Parking Lot Transforms Into a Secret Urban Garden
Welcome to How They Pulled It Off, where we take a close look at one particularly challenging aspect of a home design and get the nitty-gritty details about how it became a reality.
When Sarah and Dylan Whitcher first laid eyes on the former warehouse in Chicago’s Avondale neighborhood, it was love at first sight—a building with personality and patina was at the top of their list. "After renting a loft in a converted comptometer factory for several years, we fell in love with the industrial warmth of old buildings," says Sarah. "We didn’t want a white-box house. We wanted exposed brick, old tin ceilings, vintage details—something that told a story."
The opening in the fence serves as the main entrance onto the property, with bluestone pavers leading you in through the blackened steel arbor.
And after a renovation of the former book bindery by local architecture firm Slowtide.Studio, Sarah and Dylan were ready to tackle the former parking lot for the industrial building. With its triangular shape, shady orientation, and previous use for parking trucks, it didn’t necessarily scream "cozy urban garden" from the get-go. But the landscape architects at Chicago-based The Outside Design Studio (TODS) team immediately had ideas.
The home and garden are located in Avondale, one of Chicago’s historically working-class neighborhoods. The area has a long history as a manufacturing and distribution hub thanks to its proximity to the Chicago River and railway lines.
Sarah, who works in operations for a global communications firm, and Dylan, who runs a local family business, wanted the space to be multipurpose. "They had a lot they wanted to fit into the space: lounging, entertaining, cooking, and dining, as well as a parking pad, and it also needed to serve as the main circulation route into the residence," explains TODS partner Paul Blanding.
The different areas of the garden accommodate different uses that are flexible and can be rearranged. "We wanted the space to feel like a discovery. Unexpected, atmospheric, and deeply tied to the rhythm of the home. It’s not just a garden. It’s a living room under the sky," explains Trudeau.
With such limited space—the lot is just over 1,200 square feet—TODS developed a plan where they clustered the different programs in different areas, allowing them to flow into one another without any hard edges. Any extra space around the different clusters became planting beds, irregular in shape and layered to create depth and a sense of the unexpected.
An outdoor kitchen was a request from Sarah and Dylan, who enjoy cooking and entertaining. Terracotta pots add to the palette of natural materials and make it easy to change plantings throughout the year.
Part of what makes the space feel so lush and transformed is the three-dimensional nature of the design. "Being so limited in space, we also needed to make use of every opportunity for vertical design," Blanding says. A hedge wraps around the perimeter of the garden, allowing the fence to disappear into the greenery, and vines on the wall of the warehouse bring the plantings above head, lifting up the eye.
How they pulled it off: Transforming a parking lot into an urban garden
- The first step to convert the former lot into a garden involved the removal of the asphalt, which had been taken away prior to construction. However, the base material was extremely compacted—so the team had to replace the soil across the whole site—six inches deep in some areas, and up to 24 inches in others.
- The replacement soil had to be installed so that both the subgrade and surface grade were pitched to allow proper drainage away from the buildings.
- Sustainability was an important part of the project. Although Chicago does not have permeability requirements, approximately 60 percent of the site is now permeable thanks to pathways made of pea gravel and porous planting beds. These materials, along with the density of trees, shrubs, and flowering perennials, allow for stormwater drainage and an urban habitat for wildlife.
- Plantings were selected so that they would grow in quickly and feel lush and enveloping. Every square inch of planting space was used, and clusters of terra-cotta pots were placed in certain areas to create a sense of geometry.
As one might imagine, the soil from the former parking lot was not able to be reused for the new function as a garden. "The soils on site were heavily compacted and essentially useless from a plant-growth standpoint," says Blanding.
The main point of inspiration for the garden was the feeling of a hidden courtyard. The wood fence, covered in part by taller trees, shields the garden from the street and creates that sense of discovery.
The garden was also designed to function throughout all seasons, both aesthetically and practically. Plantings were chosen that would work year-round or were located in planters that could easily be swapped out seasonally. "The plant palette emphasized shade-tolerant selections, such as climbing hydrangea, textural greens, and seasonal containers," explains TODS partner Catherine Trudeau. "The loose, blousy forms add romance and visual interest, even in the winter," she adds. Even the materials were designed to withstand harsh Chicago winters, like the blackened steel arched arbor and thermal bluestone near the atrium.
Views from the atrium allow Sarah and Dylan to appreciate the garden year-round, and also serves to physically connect the two buildings that border the garden. The brick building is the former book bindery, and the concrete block building now is the rental property.
But the views work both ways—the atrium glows at night, creating a sense of warmth from the garden into the glazed space.
Another key element of the design was a glass atrium that connected the main home (the former book bindery) to a two-flat rental on site. The modern space acts as a strong contrast to the history of the former book bindery and the natural world of the garden, but also enables its viewing and enjoyment year-round.
Project Credits:
Architect (Residence and Atrium): Slowtide.Studio
Builder: LG Group
Landscape Architect (Garden and Hardscape): The Outside Design Studio
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