“It’s the shortest commute I’ve ever experienced,” says Bruno Ast about his 100-year-old house in Old Town. For 21 years Ast and his wife, Gunduz Dagdelen, have run an architectural firm out of their house. For the last six months, the two architects have also been operating another business: since June, the 250-square-foot space in the front of their ground-floor office has housed an art gallery.
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Ast and Dagdelen are best known for rehabbing and redesigning Old Town homes–six on their block alone, including their own, part of which is still in progress. “We have areas of responsibility in our projects,” says Ast. “Gunduz is strong in design, in the initial work. Then we work together on the definitive design. Generally, I take over on the construction documents and work with the contractors at the site.”
Working together as both architects and curators, Ast and Dagdelen have few breaks from one another. But they do get some breathing space; he teaches architecture at UIC, and she does work for several organizations, including the Chicago Architecture Foundation. And they keep their curating projects separate.
Stanley Tigerman contributed real pen-and-ink drawings dealing with conflict and tombs and death and dying. Architects Robert Somol and Linda Pollari put together nine panels, four by six feet in all, filled with military images taken from TV coverage of the current crisis.
“Old Town was always an art community, but the artists have moved away during gentrification. So the gallery is our way of maximizing and trying to stabilize this artists’ community.”
