Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Articles Sections >> Arts + Words Bars + Clubs Dating Festivals Fitness Food Lifestyle Music Theater Travel + Tourism Who's Who > View All Cheap Thrills Green Thumb

Saving Grace

A visit to Salvage One proves that designing with reused materials isn't all dusty doorknobs.

Monday Jun 30, 2008.     By Sharon Hoyer

Lifestyle Feed

I walked beneath a row of crystal chandeliers in search of a good spot to sit down and do some scribbling. About 10 dining room sets, each from a different design era, were spaced around the room; green vinyl chairs from the '60s were arranged about 50 feet from a claw-foot, rough-hewn table sturdy enough for vikings to feast upon without feeling the need for undue decorum.

I soon spied the most appropriate corner to work: two rows of old school desks—the metal kind with a hinged wood top—and the little wood-and-steel torture devices the public school system about a quarter century ago referred to as chairs, the sight of which brought me reeling back to second grade. In the end I elected not to join the mock schoolroom because a massive clock, looming like the face of God above an authoritative table positioned at the front of the class, made me feel my deadline just a bit too keenly. I chose a red pleather chair beside a steel-and-Formica table that I'm positive once belonged to my godparents.

I was wandering around the expansive second floor showroom of Salvage One, one of Chicago's homes of architectural reuse. The place is a massive playground of cool old stuff, recently cleaned up, reorganized and imaginatively displayed thanks to the teamwork of Brian Wilcox, Salvage One's new business manager, and Davide Nanni, the owner of Alter Ego Forms, a new design firm that fills the fourth floor of the building. Not too long ago, all of Salvage One looked like the third floor—a storeroom of claw-foot bathtubs, doors, doorknobs, escutcheon plates and other dusty hardware collected from demolished or renovated buildings. This new partnership with Alter Ego puts the focus on custom design; customers can work with the resources in the salvage shop downstairs and the brilliance of the artists upstairs to create personalized interiors for their homes or businesses. Environmentally speaking, it's a model both ingenious and intuitive: building materials are rescued from the landfill, new furnishings are coming from a local source instead of virgin wood and, best of all, the final product is completely unique.

If the designers are given license, outrageously unique. The guys in the upstairs shop clearly enjoy their work, especially the commercial jobs—bars, restaurants, small businesses—where they can fashion slightly wilder objects than what most people keep in their homes.

The most recent project I got to look at was a bar booth constructed from the parts of a pinball machine, with a table built from a bowling alley lane. Upstairs in the workshop, graceful abstract sculptures hewn from scrap wood hang from the interior support columns. On the second floor, a team of tiny horses rescued from a playground have been removed from their industrial spring mounts and hitched to an immense steel contraption that looks like part sleigh, part wheat thresher. Across the room, a Blue Angels formation of pipe organ/baby swing jets hang from the ceiling as though on display in the Strategic Air and Space Museum. It's my second visit to the store and I keep stumbling on objects I hadn't noticed before, both functional and fantastical. The stuff feels organic, alive; you can see the hands behind it, not like the pre-digested showrooms in Ikea.

Working with creative people is what gets Brian Wilcox excited. I'm trying to wheedle a good quote from him on the environmental benefits of building with salvage, but green stats don't seem to be the first thing on his mind. After all, it's pretty much a moot point. Shipping furniture or wood to build furniture across the country is energy-intensive; one third of municipal waste is generated by the construction industry—of course reusing perfectly good materials from local buildings makes sense.

But Brian's focus is on the next step: how can the space be used better? What like-minded individuals can he team up with to expand the reach of the project? A new vintage clothing design shop will soon occupy some open space on the second floor, doing with reused clothes what Alter Ego does with salvaged architectural supplies. Brian's next plan: convert the salvage shop's enormous diesel van into a grease-burner and start an environmentally friendly moving business. He invited me to come and write the column in the store because they just like having people around working on stuff.

I took a final survey of the space before packing up; a few browsers were trying out chairs, marveling at a homemade chandelier, wandering in and out of little freestanding rooms full of treasures. It's the enthusiasm, imagination and resourcefulness of businesses like these that define the soul of environmentalism: doing something not just because it's right, but because the right way is also the better way.

It took a move from the regimented lawnscapes of the suburbs to the congestion of a major metropolis for Sharon to look twice at what she puts in the trash, down the sink and into her own body. She reports fortnightly on her endeavors to change "greening" from calculated deviation to a practicable way of life. You can contact her here.