by Russell Boniface
Associate Editor

Summary: Chicago-based Harley Ellis Devereaux was recently honored at the annual Chicago Neighborhood Development Awards with a Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design for its design of Wentworth Commons, a 51-unit, 65,800-square-foot affordable housing complex located in Chicago’s Roseland neighborhood. Wentworth Commons’ four levels serve at-risk and formerly homeless families and individuals. Varied earth tones on a jogged façade create an inviting, colorful structure that gives an appearance of several buildings. The interior design arranges living space and assistance facilities to best help residents. Wentworth also incorporates sustainable design components, including photovoltaic panels on its roof. Wentworth Commons, open one year, could become one of the first LEED®-certified residential developments in Chicago.

Design emphasizes community living, sustainability
Wentworth Commons is an eye-catching, L-shaped masonry building on a corner site surrounded by vacant lots. The design combines a colorful, non-traditional exterior appearance with a warm, open interior for interactivity and support programs. Sustainable components cap the award-winning design, highlighted by downward-sloping, rooftop solar panels supported by exposed roof trusses. The solar panels generate 25 percent of the building’s electricity.

Harley Ellis Devereaux followed the security philosophy of developer Mercy Housing Lakefront not to put apartments on the ground floor. The first level includes offices for case managers combined with social spaces for employment training, after-school activities, and community events. The furnished residential spaces on the upper three floors provide common areas and a mix of studio and family apartments.

“It’s more than a roof,” says Harley Ellis Devereaux Principal and Project Leader Susan F. King, AIA. “The housing is one thing, but to be successful you need to have programs for residents with a mixture of architecture and sustainability.”

Wentworth Commons also addresses the environmental issues associated with low-income neighborhoods. In addition to the solar roof panels, sustainable components include:

• Native plantings and a bio-swale to reduce storm water runoff
• Regional, rapidly renewable materials, such as wheatboard wall panels
• Energy-efficient heating and cooling using high-efficiency boilers, a heat recovery system, and super insulation.

Because of its sustainable design components, Wentworth may receive LEED® certification. Few residential developments in Chicago have LEED status to date.

Form and function
“There are two populations at Wentworth: families and individuals renting studios,” explains King. “We proposed mixing them together to build a community. That played heavily into what the building would look like three-dimensionally.”

To create a sense of individual homes, King divided the building’s façade into vibrant, earth-toned blocks of color. King took design cues from traditional home structures in New Amsterdam by creating large jogs back and forth in the façade. “For example, the place where it’s jogging inward is the location of the studio apartments,” she says. “So there is a relationship between the building’s form and the decision to mix the two groups inside.”

King wanted to encourage a sense of community among the residents by providing interior common areas. “In the center of the long leg of the L shape is the elevator core, where we created a shared living room right outside the apartments on each floor to create community. We figured most circulation would happen at the elevators, where you can see your neighbor coming home or going out. We placed the laundry room behind the shared living rooms, so instead of the caretaker or parents running to a laundry room and leaving the kids alone, the kids can be in the shared living space. Natural light also comes into the shared living rooms and the corridors.”

King is encouraged to see Wentworth residents embracing the community concept. “I think that’s proving that these buildings are producers. New lives are being created here. These are productive buildings.”