Lucien Lagrange, the architect who designed several of Chicagoland’s most iconic residential skyscrapers, including the 70-story Park Tower, has joined the Lamar Johnson Collaborative, a subsidiary of Clayco, a national development firm currently working on the Obama Presidential Center and the $8.5 billion O’Hare International Airport modernization project.
Moving to a huge company like Clayco is a significant shift for Lagrange, who founded an independent design firm in 1985. But the 82-year-old, who brought over his entire 10-person design team, said he still has plans for big-scale residential projects and hotels, and Clayco, which handles all facets of development from design and engineering to construction, will help make those visions a reality.
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“It’s going to give me more opportunities to do what I really want to do,” he said.
Lagrange’s projects tend to go against the grain. Instead of the modernist style, characterized by lots of steel and glass, adopted by so many Chicago designers in the second half of the 20th century, including Mies van der Rohe and Helmut Jahn, Lagrange finds inspiration in an earlier Chicago, the Chicago of Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham. Lagrange buildings such as 2550 N. Lakeview Ave. in Lincoln Park and the 60-story Waldorf Astoria building in the Gold Coast typically include the exterior decorations and ornate flourishes common in pre-World War II Chicago.
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“What we want to do is bring back the elegance of Lake Shore Drive, especially as it was in the 1920s and 1930s,” Lagrange said.
The classical touches make Lagrange buildings popular with homebuyers, and that in turn makes him popular with Chicago real estate developers, according to residential broker Jennifer Ames, president of Ames Group Chicago. She has sold units in three Lagrange properties, including Park Tower, located at 800 N. Michigan Ave., and 2550 Lakeview.
“He has outperformed the condo market, because it’s the right formula, all-star work on buildings in all-star locations,” she said. “His buildings have an intimacy that you feel when you first walk in, and that’s different from some other residential buildings, which sometimes just feel like hotels.”
Citadel founder Ken Griffin bought Park Tower’s 66th-floor penthouse in 2012 for $15 million, and its 65th-floor penthouse was bought in 2015 for $18.75 million by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas and his wife, Ariel Investments President and co-CEO Mellody Hobson.
Lucien Lagrange joins LJC as principal and senior design consultant. My-Nga Lam, Victor Krasnopolsky and Alfredo Marr of Lucien Lagrange Studio also came aboard as principals. LJC now has more than 250 staff and offices in Chicago, St. Louis, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Phoenix, and Kansas City, Missouri.
Lagrange and his team did complete modernist designs, including Erie on the Park, a steel-and-glass condo tower finished in 2002 at 510 West Erie St. in River North. That’s not surprising, as Lagrange spent the first 13 years of his career at SOM, the iconic Chicago firm that designed modernist landmarks such as 875 N. Michigan Ave., formerly known as the John Hancock Center, and the 110-story Willis Tower.
But as the son of a mason, the French-born Lagrange said he enjoys designs which utilize stone and limestone facades, such as 2550 North Lakeview, or provide homelike touches, such as the tapered roof and huge bay windows for The Butler, a new 22-story condo building in Oak Brook designed by his studio.
Recent projects from LJC include Fulton East, a 12-story boutique office building in Fulton Market, Triangle Square Apartments in Bucktown and the design for a 7,000-square-foot community plaza in the Austin neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. The new blood from Lagrange’s studio will invigorate LJC’s work in both luxury residential and hospitality, according to Lamar Johnson, the firm’s executive chairman.
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“Lucien’s work has a grandeur and elegance that people long for, and Lucien and his team will make us much stronger,” he said. “There is a lot I can learn from Lucien.”
