I only lasted a year in my first Chicago North-Side studio apartment. Carpeting, the lack of southern exposure, and single room living, were not working for the anxious architect in me. I knew that if I wanted bigger and better that I would have to leave Old Town/Lincoln Park and venture outside my near-north side comfort zone. Like a 1989 version of Goldilocks, I checked out apartments in Bucktown, Pilsen, South Loop, Taylor Street, Ukranian Village, and Wicker Park and found each of these neighborhoods (circa. 1989) to be nice places to visit, but I didn’t want to live there.

A former classmate told me about his neighborhood, North-Center, and next thing I knew, I had a beautiful one-bedroom apartment in a Chicago courtyard building with wood floors and both southern and northern exposures. That was the good news, the bad news was, I didn’t own any furniture.

I “discovered” Chicago’s River North and its art scene as a high school student back in the late ‘70s early ‘80s. Gallery owners like Roy & Ann Boyd, Roberta Lieberman, Donald Young, Rhona Hoffman, Hudson, and Robbin Lockett took a liking to me and introduced me not only to the Chicago Art Scene, but contemporary art in general. None of them seemed to question my age and given that I was about 4’-6” and a few years away from “maturity” at the time, this was a unique and unknown experience as I’d been teased about my height and youthful looks relentlessly since as far back as I could remember.

Post college, a foot taller, and finally having reached puberty, I religiously attended River North “First Fridays” (the first Friday of every month) awkwardly moving from one art gallery to another, not so much to see the new art, but hoping to find somebody to talk to about the art I was seeing.

To actually see the art and learn about the artists making the art, I would visit galleries again on Saturday mornings when the crowds had cleared, and galleries had transformed overnight from mob scene to serene. One Saturday, between May 26 and June 24, 1989, I encountered an exhibition of Donald Judd sculpture and furniture at the Donald Young gallery, an exhibition that would change the trajectory of my design life forever. Seeing Donald Judd’s sculpture (sculpture that looked like furniture) and furniture (furniture that looked like sculpture) was an epiphany. Gallery owner Donald Young showed me a book titled “Donald Judd: Architektur” which included writings and images describing the lines Donald Judd was blurring between writing, sculpture, furniture, and architecture.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s (pre-internet) I kept a Rolodex of bookstores around the world specializing in art and architecture books. Eventually I found a copy of Donald Judd: Architektur at the Art Catalogues bookshop in Los Angeles and it immediately became my furniture design bible.

In Donald Judd Architektur, Donald Judd wrote, “The configuration and the scale of art cannot be transposed into furniture and architecture. The intent of art is different from that of the latter, which must be functional. If a chair or a building is not functional, if it appears to be only art, it is ridiculous. The art of a chair is not its resemblance to art, but is partly its reasonableness, usefulness and scale as a chair. These are proportion, which is visible reasonableness. The art in art is partly the assertion of someone’s interest regardless of other considerations. A work of art exists as itself; a chair exists as a chair itself. And the idea of a chair isn’t a chair.” With Donald Judd's words as inspiration and guidance, I proceeded to design and fabricate furniture that was both useful and reasonable.

Back in 1989, drafting was still the norm, but I was being asked by both my current employer (Perkins & Will) and my own intellectual curiosity to begin the transition to computer aided design (CAD) and drawing. My Donald Judd inspired drafting desk/table was the last drafting table I would design, fabricate, and use as computer drawing and hand drawing turned out to have different requirements in terms of desktop height, length, and depth.

Whereas drafting desks were on their way to being a furniture type of the past, the desk and/or table at 29"-30" tall proved to be perfectly fine for computer drawing, day to day home office work, and even dining. My Donald Judd inspired table was designed to provide a clean/minimal surface and front elevation in combination with supports/structure that not only lifted the table's top to its optimal height, but also provided storage for books, binders, and anything else that could/might be stored on a shelf.

All of the books I'd read and/or studied related to chair design went into great detail about the angle of the chair seat in relation to the angle of the chair back. Donald Judd decided that ergonomics were less important than the simplicity and beauty of a 90 degree angle/relationship between chair seat and back. This chair with its 90 degree seat/back relationship and its lack of padding and fabric gives the impression of a less than optimal and/or comfortable seat, but the reality was that this chair was amazingly comfortable and served me well for the initial dozen years of my work from home existence.

With a drafting table, dining/all purpose table, and chair under my woodworking belt, I moved on to smaller pieces that were both necessary and/or functional, but also an opportunity to test the conceptual side of Donald Judd's inspiration on furniture and functional objects that he hadn't yet explored or investigated. Although my world was transitioning from analog to digital and more of my files were being stored on my computer's hard drive, there seemed to be a never ending need for hanging file storage of documents. This hanging file storage cube design was meant to be both functional on its own, and stackable/modular in combination with hanging file storage cubes similar in dimension and design.