As we made our way through the 116 West Illinois Street, straight up to the fourth floor we entered the office of Vladimir Radutny Architects. The firm was started in 2008 by Vladimir Radutny himself in collaboration with a partner who was not working with him any longer, as they had separated their business. About the team, an observation made about them was that they were all University of Illinois graduates. As told to us, Mr. Ryan Sarros had been working with the firm from 3 years and Ms. Fanny Hothan had been working with him from 7 years.
As it was evident on their website, the strength of Vladimir’s firm is not in the number of people working for him. It’s an intimate firm focused on detail of the project. The firm started with the support of a relative who was interested in real estate development within the city. The idea was to build and sell the designs. The environment felt more studio like, just the way it works in an architecture school. Their range of projects varied from a 100 sq. ft to 14,000 sq.ft condo unit.
With an office space that provides for a work-space of about four to five people, a lot of their project process work in the form of boards and process models were displayed in the office, and additionally the display also comprised awards and certificates. When asked about his plans for future expansion of his firm, Vladimir clearly stated that it wasn’t a good thing for his mental health. His ideas were straight forward as it was not about the work, it was about the people and that it gets challenging to manage the people on various projects.
Their passion was projected through the details in every aspect of their project. Exploration of material and introduction to light was the main factor that they based their design approach on. He walked us through a series of construction drawings of a project and explained the project right from the conceptual stage up to the detail of the fixing of the smallest element of the project. Designed to perfection in terms of access and landscape, not to forget that each of these units had at least three sides that receive natural light which is a challenge for residential projects. It was quite an interesting approach to designing at this scale for them and more so, the structural aspect of their project, as they got to learn a lot on that front. It was truly inspirational to meet with the team and I got to see what it means when they say that God is in the detail !
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