Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow co-founded Kwong Von Glinow Design Office in Chicago in 2016. Both partners earned their Masters of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design. They have worked for Pritzker prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron in Basel, Switzerland, Pritzker prize-winner Wang Shu in Hangzhou, and SOM in Chicago and New York. Their firm has been named the recipient of the 2016 Chicago Prize awarded by the Chicago Architecture Club. They have also received 1st Prize for the 2017 NYC Affordable Housing Challenge. Their projects have been featured on ArchDaily, Bustler, Archinect, Afasia, Harvard GSD Grounded Visionary, and the Chicago Tribune. Their office is currently working on several projects in Chicago and Hong Kong.
2016 Chicago Prize, 1st Place
Chicagoans are passionate about the city, the lake, and even the highway - the famous Lake Shore Drive. The Grand Lattices project seeks to intensify the experience of Lake Shore Drive by providing pedestrian access at the underpass to viewing towers above Lake Shore Drive. These Grand Lattices create a gateway to access the waterfront, see the city, and admire the lake.
1st Prize for NYC Affordable Housing Challenge, 1st Place
The design of the Table Top Apartments emerges from a system of modules, taken from a table top with four legs. Three types of table tops are introduced to allow for a diversity of unit types that can aggregate to form a studio for a single person and up to four table tops to house a large family. The use of three different shapes and their deliberate misalignment creates vertical courtyards that give open space for circulation, light, and air.
