Rebel Garages: Alternative Archives, New Futures and Co-conspirators for Disobedient Alley Architecture
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REBEL
GARAGES
Alternative Archives, New Futures,
and Co-conspirators for Disobedient
Alley Architecture
Ann Lui and Craig Reschke
Future Firm
Copyright © 2019 Future Firm
Future Firm
3149 S. Morgan St.
Chicago, IL 60608
Published by the Chicago Architecture Foundation
dba Chicago Architecture Center
Chicago Architecture Center
111 E. Wacker Drive. Ste. 1321
Chicago, IL 60601
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without written
permission from the authors, except by a reviewer who may
quote passages in a review. For permissions requests, write to the
publisher at the address above.
Every effort has been made to identify owners and gain permission
for images. Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent
editions. All other images and photographs are original work by
Future Firm.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-0-9973615-2-0
Design by Partner & Partners
This publication has been made possible in part by:
City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events
(DCASE)
REBEL
GARAGES
Alternative Archives,
New Futures, and
Co-conspirators for
Disobedient Alley
Architecture
FOREWORD
Chicago Architecture Center
Across America today, one can find dozens
of noteworthy initiatives to reinvent the
accessory dwelling unit and the promise of a
useful, affordable infrastructure for testing
our renewed urban ethics. Could Rebel
Garages become Chicago’s entry in this
movement?
As arresting as the term “rebel garage” may
sound, a closer look reveals a story laden with
as much pragmatism as serendipity. That’s
not to say the topic isn’t downright playful.
It is. To meet Future Firm is to find oneself
ushered into an amusing language centered
on “alley culture” and the pursuit of personal
liberties through a secret architecture.
The Chicago Architecture Center’s
connection to this work came about through
the mounting of our 2015 exhibition entitled
50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50 Wards. We invited
50 local design teams to present speculative
opportunities for improving life in every
7
Chicago neighborhood. Our purpose was to
demonstrate how a cityscape might contain
the seeds to its own regeneration. Rebel
Garages pushes the notion a critical next step
through its animating belief that for Chicago
to succeed, it must work for all of us—and at a
very personal level.
The suggested policy and code changes at the
heart of this publication are a starting place
for broader community conversation. Just as
important, is the modest observation that the
archive of local rebel garages is nearly always
an architecture of uplift. What else should city
life be if not invigorating? Why not nurture
this optimism in the alley, if that’s where it
wants to grow?
Rebel Garages is an idea whose time has come.
Michael Wood
Senior Director of Program Strategy
Chicago Architecture Center
Foreword
8
CONTENTS
AN OPEN LETTER TO CHICAGO 13
PERSONAL-SPACE
Garages: Each To Their Own Heterotopia 21
REBEL GARAGE ARCHIVE 27
1. Kevin and Elaine 28
2. Megan 34
3. Nicole 38
4. Mike W. 42
5. Mejay and Eric 48
6. Marcos 54
7. Mike N. 58
8. Thomas and Nancy 62
9. Renee 68
NEIGHBOR-SPACE
Alleys: B-sides, In Betweens, Spaces of Exchange 73
NINE POLICY PROPOSALS 79
1. Rebel Blocks 81
2. Diversify Businesses 85
3. Bigger Home Businesses 89
4. Hang Your Shingle 93
5. Everyone’s Invited 97
6. Legalize Coach Houses 101
7. Garage First, House Second 105
8. No Parking 109
9. Garage Starchitecture 113
CITY-SPACE
Civic Assets: Identifying New Public Commons 117
CASE STUDIES 123
1. Andersonville Parklet 124
2. Muebles Sullivan 128
3. Cook County Land Bank Association 132
4. Make Way for People Program 136
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 141
DEAR
CHICAGOANS,
What do you do in your garage other than park
your car? Do you dream of starting your own
new business that takes the place of the day-today
grind? Do you live a secret life, formative
and dark, away from the bright light of the main
house? Do you cook, paint, weld, or organize
alternate futures—making new projects, ideas,
and visions of your life and the life of your
community in the space of your garage?
This project is about the rebel garage:
an architectural site defined as existing
simultaneously in-between and outside of the
crisp delineations of public/private space, legal/
illegal construction, individual/community
territory. We see the rebel garage as both
the most architecturally banal and the most
architecturally potent space in the city.
Through this publication, we
invite you to enter the realm
of the garage as a slippery,
blurry, and architecturally
illicit space: one which eludes
the bureaucratic, legislative,
and social restrictions that
gird buildings and the ways
we use them.
The idea behind Rebel Garages emerged three
years ago, when we got a new puppy and signed
up for dog training classes, which, as it turns
out, were held in a garage. Since then, we have
visited dozens of Chicago garages: the secret
abodes, studios, and unofficial offices of city
residents whose plans and dreams exceed the
limits of their primary residences. We’ve also
asked residents, as well as designers and policy
makers, to tell us their visions for the future of
garages in Chicago.
ABOVE Visiting with
designer Tim Parsons,
who uses his carport
as an expanded studio
space and occasional
site for pop-up events
with friends and
colleagues.
BELOW A panorama
from 2017’s “Manor
Garage Sale,” an annual
event held in the north
side neighborhood of
Ravenswood Manor. On
this day, many residents
in the neighborhood
hold garage sales and
also participate in
casual events, share
food, organize play
dates, catch up with
friends, and meet
strangers.
PERSONAL-SPACE
In the first section, we look closely at the
individual scale: meeting with Chicagoans in
the garage spaces which support their passions,
interests, and agendas. We argue that the garage
is uniquely “Chicago” in character: not because
of its brick facade or vinyl siding or the basketball
hoop outside. Instead, we show how the garage
is quintessentially “Chicago” because of the
complexity and unknowability of its character:
it is an architecture that misbehaves, that
transforms quickly, that is dramatically different
in different neighborhoods; an architecture that
can be bizarre, dull, often ugly, but just as often
hauntingly beautiful. It’s an architecture that
resists giving itself away: that shows one face to
This publication is a documentation of these
unique garage spaces—including the quirky
and spectacular ways that residents have
shaped garages to their own uses—and, in
response, a speculative proposal for the future
of the Chicago alley as a civic project, with
legislative and policy-driven consequences.
Alternating between an investigation at the
scale of the individual and the urban scale, this
publication uses the oddity of the garage as a
new lens through which to understand the city
and the ways we all shape architecture everyday
to our own ends.
An Open Letter to Chicago
the public, another to friends, and still another
to potential enemies—thieves, judgmental
neighbors, business competitors, or simply nosy
passersby. It’s an architecture where “DIY” takes
on new meanings: garages are spaces in which
people come together over extremely divergent
passions from repairing cars to sharing organic
food to advocating for social change.
This section includes the Rebel Garage
Archive, a series of nine interviews with
Chicagoans across the city. We’ve presented
14 15
these interviews as part of a “garage witness
protection program,” concealing the garages’
surrounding contexts through illustration and
only using first names in order to protect the
privacy of the interviewees.
NEIGHBOR-SPACE
In the second section, we explore
relationships at the scale of the community,
beginning with the history of alleys in
Chicago and other cities. Here we introduce
nine policy proposals to regulate and
facilitate rebel garages with the intent that
these spaces become more equitable, vibrant,
and better reflect existing use.
Looking closely at Chicago’s alleys, we can see
how these spaces—B-sides, back covers, spaces
that conceal what we do not want to see—can,
in fact, tell the story of changing needs in
transportation, infrastructure, and social life.
The city’s first alleys were laid out in 1830 as
part of an effort to develop areas alongside the
Illinois and Michigan Canal near Bridgeport
that would connect Lake Michigan and the
Illinois River. At that time, the alleys and stables
were spaces for horse manure and trash, which
was not picked up as regularly as it is today. In
the early 1900s, the alleys evolved to be for cars
instead of horses. In recent decades, fueled by
a changing economy, more and more residents
use their garages to augment their income or
strengthen their community ties, using garages
as sites for new or side businesses as well as
collective gathering.
An Open Letter to Chicago
Through the nine policy proposals in this
section, we begin to ask: What is the next phase
for the Chicago garage and for the alley, the
crucial connective tissue? In the future, we
predict fewer Chicagoans will drive or have
a car of their own, thanks to autonomous
vehicles, ride sharing, and the undisputable
reckoning that will occur with our collective
use of natural resources. What will the new
landscape of the city’s secondary streets look
like, sound like, and how will they support or
divide our neighborhoods?
CITY-SPACE
In the final section, we argue that rebellious use
of Chicago’s garages and alleys begins to define
a unique model for public, or civic, space.
In this section, we look closely at a few case
studies, both regional and international, which
identify means and methods for approaching
complex urban issues at this scale. These
case studies all focus on the paradox at the
heart of this project: how do you create policy
and regulation which supports, but doesn’t
stymie, the vital rhythm of unorthodox or rebel
architecture and its use by everyday citizens—
creating conditions in which diverse uses can
thrive equitably?
Looking closely today, we can see how the alleys
are a world unto themselves. On one hand, they
are sites of civic infrastructure: collecting trash
and delivering power to each house, regulated
by Chicago’s Department of Transportation,
16 17
cyclically reborn each year between winter’s
potholes and summer’s re-paving. On the
other hand, they are sites of social engagement
and exchange: where kids learn to ride a bike
or play ball; where jazz musicians change
the beat; where we argue with our neighbors;
where scrappers hunt through daily discards
for recycled wealth; and where we slip through
a shortcut to the place we need to go. How
might these ecologies—human, natural, and
economic—amplify and transform in the
coming years?
The immediate goal of this publication is to
catalog and celebrate the rebel garage as a
unique yet ubiquitous architectural and urban
condition which, though small in size, can help
transform the way we see the city at large. Using
the garage and alley as a model, this publication
proposes that architects can use their design
expertise to connect regulatory concerns to the
on-the-ground use of buildings and streets.
In the end, we see this publication as a tool to
build discourse, if not consensus, on policy
proposals which reflect the complexity of
existing uses and tangible opportunities for
future change through architecture and design.
—Ann & Craig
An Open Letter to Chicago
18
GARAGES:
EACH TO
OUR OWN
HETEROTOPIA
Investigating what it means to design, build, or
live outside of the code.
1. Foucault, Michel. “Of
Other Spaces.” Spaces
of Visual Culture, 2006.
ABOVE The mythical
location where Steve
Jobs and Steve
Wozniak started Apple
in 1976. The garage (and
house), at 2066 Crist
Dr. in Los Altos, is now
designated a historic
site. Image courtesy
of Mathieu Thouvenin,
Creative Commons
License.
THE ETHOS of the rebel garage is more than
a secondary use: it reflects and produces a
completely different and unique way of seeing
architecture in Chicago, one that depends on
both the physical parameters of a building but
also the specifics of time, use, and engagement
with its surroundings. In his 1967 lecture, “Of
Other Spaces,” Michel Foucault defines the
idea of heterotopia¹ as sites defined by their
otherness: spaces of crisis, juxtapositions of
incongruous uses, and territories that are
temporally rather than spatially delineated. A
boat, separated from the world, running under
its own rules that circumnavigate land-bound
realities, or a motel room where two lovers
meet, temporarily constructing an alternate
life—these are Foucault’s heterotopias par
excellence.
We understand the rebel garage as Chicago’s
own ubiquitous and quintessential heterotopia:
an architectural condition not defined by the
lines and materials notated on an architectural
drawing, a Department of Buildings permit,
Garages: Each to Our Own Heterotopia
a zoning ordinance, or an owner’s use on any
given day but rather a combination of all these
parameters, including the myriad uses that
transpire every day and every night. The rebel
garage allows what Foucault describes as
“deviant” uses, broadly understood. It is a space
where the activities that cannot take place in the
house, the office, or the street, but require certain
conditions of both privacy and publicness,
begin to flourish. It’s a space which allows those
activities—a side business, a private hobby, or
a dream of an alternate lifestyle—to grow. It is a
space whose openings and closings are precisely
orchestrated by the closing of the garage door
and the illumination of a single overhead light.
The garage can be completely transformed by
these simple operations: think, for example, of
the complete otherworldliness of a punk garage
band playing live at full volume.²
Unlike, however, Foucault’s heterotopic cruise
ships, psychiatric hospitals, or prisons, which
are singular spaces, constructed as communities
isolated from the rest of the world, the rebel
garage is both individualized and distributed.
Chicago’s mundane garage, when considered as
an ecology of interiors, can be read as a system
(rather than singular example) of heterotopic
otherness that is, in fact, often legally required to
be delivered along with your place of residence.
The way that the garage becomes a potent site
for heterotopic conditions, simultaneously
personalized and yet also ubiquitous, reveals our
collective need for secondary spaces—“other”
spaces for both private and public pursuits.
2. For more on garages
and garage bands,
see: Fischer, Marc,
and Public Collectors.
Hardcore Architecture.
Chicago, IL: Half Letter
Press, 2015.
22 23
3. Minami, Noritaka,
Julian Rose, and Ken
Yoshida. 1972 - Nakagin
Capsule Tower.
Heidelberg: Kehrer
Verlag, 2015.
4. For more, see:
Koolhaas, Rem, and Hans
Ulrich Obrist. Project
Japan: Metabolism
Talks... Edited by
Kayoko Ota and James
Westcott. Köln; London:
Taschen, 2011.
5. For more on this,
see: Andres Jaque,
“Politics Do Not Happen
in Squares,” in Urbonas,
Gediminas, Ann Lui, and
Lucas Freeman, eds.
Public Space? Lost and
Found. Cambridge, MA:
SA+P Press, 2017.
BELOW Photographs by
Noritaka Minami from
1972—Nakagin Capsule
Tower of architect Kisho
Kurokawa’s seminal
work in Tokyo, Japan.
Minami’s work features
the way residents have
transformed their
capsules to reflect their
own uses and tastes
over time. Images
courtesy of Noritaka
Minami.
The idea of a heterotopia that is both
personalized and distributed occurs
everywhere, in different forms. In Tokyo,
Japan: consider photographer Noritaka
Minami’s work, documented in his book
1972, on the Nagakin Capsule Tower.³ The
apartment tower, designed by architect Kisho
Kurokawa, was intended to be a prototype
for a new, customizable, and mobile form of
modern life. Today, these early dreams have
calcified: yet in their wake, each living unit has
become increasingly eccentric, unique, and
architecturally transformed by its inhabitants.⁴
In Barcelona: consider architect Andres Jaque’s
project, IKEA Disobedients, which critiqued
IKEA’s marketing campaign describing
one’s home as a personal “kingdom.”⁵ Jaque
visited, photographed, and interviewed
Barcelona residents who use their houses
and apartments as businesses, lgbt support
group headquarters, farms,
video studios, and more. Or,
lastly, in New York: consider
the provocative series of
Manhattan Mini Storage ads,
one of which featured an image
of a man in drag surrounded
by a wardrobe of clothing in a
storage unit, titled: “I like my
wife and kids, but I love my
storage room.” This ad featured
in a series of others in which
the storage unit might be used
to grow hobbies (“I like film
festivals, but I love...”); avoid
pet hair (“I like pet adoption,
but I love...”); or nerd out (“I like
Garages: Each to Our Own Heterotopia
special issue no. 364, but...”). All
over the world, contemporary
urban life produces, in parallel
to more generic architectural
building types, these odd
personalized spaces of eccentric
pursuits: a storage locker or
garage where one can engage
in and imagine alternative
presents and futures.
What do you do in your garage
other than park your car?
What rules and status quos—
architectural, economic, social,
or cultural—do you break or
slip around in your garage?
Who do you break those rules
with? Understanding the ethos of the rebel
garage is to understand it not just through the
physical characteristics of its size, or materials,
but also as a condition situated in the gray areas
of both time and culture. Temporally, it opens
when the door closes and the light turns on,
and closes when you pack up your hobby or
side business for the night. Culturally, it holds
space in gray zones: in territories of behavior,
business, and desires which cannot exist in the
main home or in the street.
Imagine lights on in a network of garages in the
city at night: the tens of thousands of seemingly
mundane architectures, each with its own
unique yeasty interior of otherness, incubating
the B-side cultures that are inevitably produced
by the exhaustively routine conditions of
everyday life outside.
TOP Manhattan Mini
Storage (MMS)
advertising campaign.
MMS’s edgy advertising
campaigns are
developed in-house,
not by an ad agency.
This series ran in 2015.
ABOVE Hardcore
Architecture, a
Tumblr blog by Marc
Fischer and project
by Public Collectors
which led to a book
of the same name
(Half Letter Press,
2015), investigates the
relationship between
1980s hardcore
bands and the banal
architecture which
incubated them. Image
courtesy of Marc
Fischer.
24 25
REBEL
GARAGE
ARCHIVE
There are rebel garages everywhere in
Chicago. These are a few of the people who
we met during our research, their stories, and
photographs of their garage interiors. Captured
in these nine examples are a range of the ways
Chicagoans transform their garages, and
the way those changes often are reflected in
their own lives, their neighborhoods, and their
understandings of the city.
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH KEVIN
& ELAINE
Kevin is a former architecture
history professor
who, after retiring, needed
a place to work, read,
and shelve his books. His
rebel garage became his new
office. On the first floor,
Kevin and his wife Elaine
use the space as a handicap
accessible picnic pavilion.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Kevin: I use the lower level, the
garage level, for the car. On
one side, it has a lot of shelves
and we store things there, including
the ladder. Upstairs, it’s
a storage spaces for lots and
lots of books.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
K: We have a car and we do
drive. Although it’s a two-car
garage, we like it so much
because we have lots of room
to get in, we have not thought
about renting the second space
to other people—which other
people in the neighborhood do.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
K: The biggest change is that I
have used it increasingly as a
study. I do work in the garage
instead of just using it for
storage. I store mostly books in
my [upper level] storage space:
it’s my professional library
from when I was teaching as an
architectural historian at IIT for
35 years. I still have an office
at IIT, but it’s handier to be
able to walk out to the storage
space and get a book, read a
book, or do a reference check
or whatever. It’s better than
taking the train or driving down
to campus.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
K: The garage was built new—
the garage we had before was
damaged when a big tree was
knocked over onto it. The new
garage is built to the zoning
standards of the city, so there’s
the space for the garage and
then there’s the gable roof and
the upper level encloses exactly
at the height you’re allowed
to have. The footprint is actually
smaller than zoning would
permit; we’ve kept more of our
backyard than we’re required to.
We realized—this was in consultation
with our contractor—that
we wanted to be in the study
space 11 months a year. The
HVAC system, which is a heat
pump, has sometimes struggled
to make the space comfortable.
In the really hot weather last
summer, there were days that
were warmer than you might
like. But that’s exactly what we
wanted, something you might
be able to use effectively comfortably
11 months per year. To
that end, this is an extremely
well-insulated garage—I think it’s
the highest standard in terms of
R-values for domestic buildings.
In terms of our heat bill, it has
made virtually no impact on the
cost of our electricity. We also
switched from incandescent to
LED lights—in the garage and
also in the house.
Do you have relationships
with your alley neighbors?
What’s your block’s alley
culture?
K: Our block alley culture is to
be generally polite when someone
is coming in or out of the
garage. Neighbors tend to be
pretty good if someone is walking
down the alley; they won’t try
to squeeze by. There’s a school
at the end of the block, so when
school is letting out, parents like
to go down the alley and they
can be kind of disruptive and
unpleasant and honk at you to
get out of the way.
28 29
The other thing is, when we first
moved in, the economic profile
of the neighborhood was a little
different. Kids and dads—mostly
boys and men—would be working
on their cars or changing
their oil or doing things like that,
and there would be occasional
casual conversations as people
walked to and fro. Now that’s
almost all gone. When we first
moved in, there also were a lot
of light industry places—repair
shops and so on—they faced
southward, but they opened out
to the alley. That’s all gone now,
which is generally good. We lost
the smell of the painting from
the [auto]body shop. There appears
to be one person on the
alley who’s doing work—I’m not
sure exactly what it is—something
like carpentry. He mostly
keeps the door closed, but a few
times when I’ve gone by and the
door has been open, it’s clearly
a work space. But I think that’s
pretty rare now in the alley. I
know a number of the other
people who have garages and
they’re just using it to store their
car or lawn mower.
Rebel Garage Archive
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
K: I think the answer to that is,
fundamentally, “no”: there are
several buildings on the alley
that are residences and are
used as apartments, which are
grandfathered in. But in every
case those dwellings face into
the backyard so they come and
go through the front yard from
the street. Relatively few people,
except as a convenience from
someone’s house, might go out
through the alley.
Elaine: If you include the first
floor of our car space: we’ve
had a couple of picnics in it. We
like to have picnics in the backyard,
and that’s why we wanted
to keep as flush a backyard
space as possible; we have a
standard size Chicago lot, so
we don’t have much space to
begin with. But on a rainy day,
we think, “Well, do we cancel?”
or do we figure out how to
cook either inside or at the grill
quickly and then eat actually in
the car space? So Kevin would
park the car on the street and
because the garage is new—it’s
still a quite clean space in the
car area—we put a lot of bright
tablecloths and take our picnic
tables in there and it’s fine. It’s a
picnic pavilion!
And we have a very good
friend who’s now in his
mid-nineties, and he finds doing
stairs increasingly difficult.
With the garage, when we’ve
had him and other friends over,
he can step right out of his car
into the car space.
I was able to make arrangements
with a couple of very
nice shops on Southport, one of
them had a handicap bathroom.
It’s a massage store, and they
said “sure,” he could come over
on the gangway between two
buildings and use their very nice
bathroom, if that was wanted.
So he doesn’t have to do any
stairs—he can just enter and
exit through the big garage door.
30 31
OWNER Kevin & Elaine
USE Study and Book Storage
LOCATION Southport Corridor
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
MEGAN
An artist who uses her rebel
garage for painting as well
as exhibiting, sharing, and
storing her work. Her garage
has a secret: the garage door
with three windows is not in
fact a garage door.
What do you use your
garage for?
Megan: I use it as a studio for
drawing, painting, and book
making.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
M: I do drive. We own one car. We
have never used the garage for
parking.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
M: When we moved in we had a
very old, leaning over garage.
The insurance company said
it was in such bad shape they
wouldn’t cover it. Eventually
we had it torn down and
replaced—with the intention of
it being a studio.
As we could, we did things like
drywall the ceiling, put in northfacing
windows and recently—
air-conditioning!
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
M: Our neighbors two doors to
the east of us also have a garage
(formerly a stable) that they use
as a recording studio/rehearsal
space and a painting studio.
They are good friends. There
used to be another neighbor
who had a sign painting studio
in his garage, but he has since
moved. It is a quiet alley, as it is
only one block long and between
two one-way streets.
two neighboring blocks. Also,
I occasionally use the alley to
throw a ball for my dog—we have
so little traffic that he can run
around and get some exercise.
Rebel Garage Archive
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
M: We framed, insulated, and
drywalled it. The hardware for
the garage door was never
installed. Originally the heat
was infrared (usually used for
chicken coops). Now it is forced
air. We had to add bars to the
windows after it was broken into.
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
M: There are a couple of
basketball hoops where kids
meet and play. And there has
been some discussion about
having an “alley block party”
that would bring together the
34 35
OWNER Megan
USE Art Studio
LOCATION Wicker Park
37
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
NICOLE
Nicole is a sculptor who makes
large-scale public art, mostly
out of metal. Her garage is
her dream studio where she
finally designed and built the
space she wanted for herself
and her work.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Nicole: For my
professional sculpture
studio. I work on largescale
outdoor public sculptures
in stainless steel, glass, mosaic,
and LEDs. I’m a welder.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
N: Yes, we have two vehicles that
are street-parked, and no, we
never use the garage for parking.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
N: I built it specifically for studio
space and it’s completely full
of my tools and materials—
everything that I need to
maintain a professional practice.
Prior to this, I rented studio
space in Bucktown, West Loop,
Damen and Fulton, Pulaski,
K-Town, and finally Gage Park.
After being “gentrified” and
ousted from them all, I finally
built one on my property.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
N: Well, I have 220 volts, heat, and
a fourteen foot overhead door!
Have you ever seen a door that
big on a residential garage? I
can’t keep it open in the summer,
though—there is pretty high crime
over here. The alley gets tons of
traffic and a lot of garbage pickers.
When I move sculptures in and
out, I try to make sure people
aren’t seeing inside. I also have a
security system and an excellent
guard dog, he’s part Chow!
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
N: These neighbors [next door]
built their garage after mine,
and he has an upper floor
with a ginormous TV because
he’s a total sports fan. He’s a
fireman and electrician; in fact,
he did my wiring. I guess my
garage was sort of a catalyst to
build personal spaces. On the
other side these are original
vintage garages—some of
these buildings are of historic
status. There’s not really a
neighborhood culture, because
I have to keep it on the downlow.
But with my two immediate
neighbors, I have a solid working
relationship. Also, this particular
alley has become a thoroughfare
for the street to the east of
us because it is cul-de-saced,
and our historic street has no
driveways and all garages are
only alley-accessed.
38 39
OWNER Nicole
USE Sculpture Studio
LOCATION Tri-Taylor
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
MIKE W.
Mike works at a hospital
in the spinal cord injury
unit. He uses his garage as
a space for fixing bikes, in
particular, ones that he helps
design or adapt for people
with spinal cord injuries.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Mike: I use it for a lot of home
repair and wood working. I
bought the place specifically
because I planned to do a lot of
bicycle repairs and some frame
building. Clearly, I use it to store
things as well, but it’s more of a
workshop than that. Specifically
how I got started was repairing
traditional bicycles. But I work at
a patient hospital, in the spinal
cord injury unit, and I’ve been
working on bikes for people with
disabilities for twelve years. So
most of the people who ride
the bikes I work on have some
kind of disability and its usually
spinal cord related. I customize,
repair, and maintain the bikes;
we even have a racing team. I
had envisioned this might be
a teaching space like at West
Town Bikes. I used to work there
and thought this might be an
extension at some point. I’m just
so busy and the work I’m doing
now is just my niche, and I’m
happy doing that. All the bikes
are outfitted differently, so for
a person’s definitive bike it will
be pretty specialized, especially
if someone has a higher level
spinal cord injury; the bikes get
really complicated, shifters
integrated into hand pedals for
people with no finger function. It
can be mechanical systems or
electrical, too. Sometimes I go fix
bikes at peoples’ homes, but for
bigger stuff, or when I have a lot
to do, I bring them home.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
M: Believe it or not, I have three
cars. I’m not proud to say that!
But my dad recently passed
away, so I inherited his two cars
and I have a little Subaru, too.
It’s nice that when it’s in here
there’s still room to work around
it. I have a truck, too, so when I
need it, I swap it out at my mom’s
house and they all fit in here.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
M: No—I’ve gotten more
interested in woodworking and
also, originally, I was anti-car.
Now I’m forty-two and really
busy with other things, and I’m
realizing it’s more practical for
me to have a car. Especially with
aging parents, being able to go
to help them and also have time
to make a living is important.
When I was rebuilding this door,
my friend was adamant that I
put a power-door operator in. I
thought, “I’m never going to park
a car in here, so why would I do
that?” And then I starting parking
in here, and I thought, he’s right,
it’s actually really nice.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
M: Fix the water. Also I put
in 220-volt electric service.
I put lights in—that was the
most amazing thing. And I
fixed the roof, it was so leaky,
everything was wet and damp.
I’ve forgotten how much work
we’ve done because I’ve
gotten used to the condition
it is now. We tuckpointed a lot
of the outside. And the door
is new, it’s insulated. This wall
was not open before—it’s a
shed addition. I can store the
majority of my home tools in
42 43
there. Putting a stereo in here,
that’s important! I spend hours
and hours out here. Eventually
it will be heated. I chased
underground flexible conduit.
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
M: They definitely have an alley
culture, but I haven’t embraced
it yet. There are definitely
neighbors who on Tuesday
nights reliably throw a party in
the alley in one guy’s garage.
The minute I go out and see a
neighbor, we talk more in the
alley than in the front of the
house. I have a few neighbors
down the way who the only time
we see and talk to each other
is in the alley. When I’m out here
working, the neighbors know and
they’ll come tapping on the door,
either to borrow something or
hang out.
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
M: We took over an empty lot at
the end of the street and turned
it into a community garden.
That’s probably a good thing.
It’s a group we organized and
Rebel Garage Archive
we approached the landowner
independently, a private
landowner who was behind on
taxes and bills. The alderman
was able to help negotiate so
that our group of neighbors
would have access.
44
OWNER Mike W.
USE Bike Shop
LOCATION McKinley Park
47
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
MEJAY &
ERIC
Mejay and Eric share their
garage as a space of work
and relaxation. They use
it for fixing motorcycles,
working in wood, and sometimes
letting a friend
sleep over.
What do you use your
garage for?
Mejay: I use it primarily as a studio
for small-scale woodworking
projects and when we’re building
things for our home. Some
of my tools used to live in our
basement, but even that space
got too cramped and inconvenient,
especially when I would
track sawdust all around the
house. With the conversion of
our garage, I’m thankful Eric and
I are both very creative and love
tinkering on new ideas. We are
constantly prototyping and are
forgiving about the process. This
is a passion and not our profession,
there are no deadlines
or stress of paying rent, we’re
allowed to play, experiment, and
have fun.
Eric: Similar things, a cool down
after I come home from work. I
can mess around out here,
build stuff, take stuff apart and
not figure out how to put it back
together. Mostly just like a toy
shop for me.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
M: I drive, it’s funny because I
didn’t need to drive for several,
several years when I first had
this as a garage. But the moment
we embarked on building
out our toy shop, I took a job
that required me to drive. Terrible
timing, but parking on the
street isn’t so bad. Eric parks his
bikes here. So I guess it is still a
garage, just for motorcycles.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
M: Since I didn’t need a car back
then and was happy commuting
by bike, I always imagined this
would be an alternate space
predominately used as a studio.
Before I met Eric, I was diving
deep into ceramics and I always
wanted to do that type of work
out here. Oddly enough, by the
time we finished the build out, I
had completely shifted my work
towards wood.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to accommodate
your uses?
M: Well, security was a big factor
for me when I lived here alone,
and there used to be a gangway
along the side of the building
that led towards the alley.
Someone tried to break into
my home once, and they came
through the back gate which
wasn’t very tall. It was so frustrating
and I just wanted to close
that off all together. So one of
the alterations I did was to keep
three walls of the garage and
then blast out the fourth [to be
open to the yard], which made
the space nice and big as well as
limiting alley access.
The other major change was to
add a bit of height to the garage.
When we were doing the roof,
we’d stand on the old joists and
hold up the new eighteen-footlong
joist high in the air and ask
someone on the ground, “This
height?” It sounds silly but in a
way I’m glad we found play in the
process.
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
M: Unfortunately we don’t really
know what that culture is like.
I assume there is one, but we
know it only slightly from the
times we take out the bikes or
throwing out trash. Since we
Rebel Garage Archive
48 49
both park our cars on the street,
we have a better connection
with our neighbors across our
street, folks who also park out
front, and others who commute
to work. I mean, this is how Eric
and I met! So I prefer it this way,
it’s more front facing.
E: If you park your car in the
garage, it seems like you know
everybody on that side of the
block. If you park your car on
the street, you know everyone
on that side. There’s a little bit of
a scrapper culture in this alley.
I’m regularly just checking back
there to see what other people
have put out. There was a lady
who used to bust my chops
about how much Tecate I would
drink, and knew exactly when
the fresh batch of empty cans
were coming out.
M: She was great, she’d yell from
the alley to let people know
when they’d leave their garage
doors open and every time she’d
see us come in/out on our bike
she’d yell, “Tecate!”
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
E: These guys on the other side
have a hot tub and a TV that
slides up out of the wall.
M: And a little fireplace up there!
E: They use the bottom of it as
a garage and upstairs is a loft
space.
A man cave?
M: Lady cave! Because we don’t
go up and down our alley so
much, we don’t really see the
inside of folks' garages. We do
have one other neighbor who
uses his garage like a warehouse.
There’s lots of trucks
that come in and out. He has a
forklift.
E: There’s a million bottles of
Snapple in there. Trucks will pull
up, he loads several pallets of
drinks, and blasts music. And it’s
just a simple tiny garage with
some cameras on the outside.
M: I think a lot of people use
their garages in alternative
ways and we just don’t know
because they look like regular
garages. Ours is a little harder
to be overlooked, since it’s got
quite a unique exterior and we
don’t have a garage door. A few
neighbors have been curious
enough to ask us what we do in
here, but I think others just assume
this is someone’s home.
Rebel Garage Archive
50 51
OWNER Mejay & Eric
USE Workshop
LOCATION Logan Square
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
MARCOS
Marcos and his father run an
auto service shop out of a
two-door garage in Pilsen. The
painted blue-brick space was
also used for an auto shop by
the owner before it was rented
by Sanchez Auto Repair.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Marcos: It’s an auto shop! There
isn’t much of an organization, all
of our tools are in the toolboxes.
[We do] everything mechanic.
No bodywork or anything with
windows. We don’t do any of
that. What else? We don’t do
any speakers, just mechanical
work: transmissions, engines,
suspensions.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
M: Yeah, but we don’t park here
other than the customers’ cars.
We service at least two to three
cars a day. We usually get a lot
of party people: let’s say Friday
night they go out and they park
right in front of the shop and
just leave it there. I mean, we
aren’t gonna call the tow truck or
anything, we just wait for them
to move it.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
M: Actually, it’s not our garage.
We rent the garage the way
it is, with the permit. So it’s
been here longer than my dad
has even been here. It’s been
here for about 40 years. The
biggest thing that's changed is
the manager. The first manager
owned the house and my father
leased it from him 24 years ago.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
M: Other than paint and probably
just cleaning up the floor a
couple times, nothing much. All
of the tools are ours, we brought
those, and also the heater. The
heater wasn’t there.
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What's
your block's alley culture?
M: Of course, yeah, we know
every single neighbor around
us. We live, probably, six blocks
from here. We have access to
an alley there, too, but we only
us it to access our own garage
for parking.
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
M: I think that there’s another
shop, it’s inside the alley. They
use their garage I think for
fixing bikes and motorcycles, by
Loomis St, if I’m not mistaken.
54 55
OWNER Marcos
USE Auto shop
LOCATION Pilsen
Rebel Garage Archive
56
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
MIKE N.
Mike runs a Chicago art
space and also has his own
own active art practice. His
garage, which he rents, is
currently a space for special
projects, but, in the future,
he hopes to host music events
or other performances.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Mike: We [my partner and I]
use the garage for special
projects, mostly for ceramics,
photography, and kind of as an
artist hangout. Sometimes we
will have friends over to work on
stuff together.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
M: We do drive, and we do have a
car. We do use it for parking, but
more often we do not. We tend
to park in the street, unless we
are going out of town or if there
is particularly bad weather.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
M: We haven’t had it too long.
But yes, we imagined it this way
when we moved in. That’s part
of the reason why we wanted it,
because we knew we could use
the space to do whatever with
good ventilation. We can sweep
and clean pretty easily. It hasn’t
changed too much except for we
have identified gradually that we
need more storage options.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
M: It’s mostly the storage, so
hooks, shelves, and containers
that accommodate the things we
do. The photo backdrops are up
there [above the ceiling joists], so
you can pull them down.
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
M: So the garage right next door
is a business owner with his wife.
They use it mostly for storage.
So I know them, but I don’t see
them very actively. Because of
the farmers’ markets in the lot
behind the garage, we want to
gradually have a shop on Sunday
mornings, so people can come
by here, too, and probably some
performances. We are into the
musical performance, especially
an idea about multiple act
performances where we can
have the garage door go up and
down, like a curtain.
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
M: In this neighborhood there
are not only galleries and
garages but also apartments
owned by the same landlord,
with many creative professionals
living and working in all of the
spaces. So quite often events
occur in apartments, in addition
to commercial spaces. These
apartments will have openings
and social events or things
around art-making.
58 59
OWNER Mike N.
USE Art Space
LOCATION Pilsen
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
THOMAS &
NANCY
Thomas and Nancy are a couple
who have lived in Ravenswood
Manor for thirty years. They
use their garage as a drop
site for Angelic Organics, the
oldest Community Supported
Agriculture (CSA) program in
the U.S.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Nancy: It is primarily a vegetable
drop for Angelic Organics. We’ve
been doing this since 1991—is
that 27 years? We’re the first, the
oldest, and still the largest drop
site. We have two full days. This
year it’s Tuesdays and Saturdays. I
found out from the farm this year
that I have the highest re-up rate,
out of 13 or 14 drop sites in the
city now. That’s just in the city not
in the suburbs. But this is the first!
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
N: When we first bought in 1985,
we did park in here. But there
were no doors, because it had a
three-fold door system, and one
third was existent and the other
two were not here so we could
just pull in. But when we decided
to renovate the roof, which was
six or seven years later, we put
doors on. No—we did the doors
before hand, when we got the
vegetables, we decided they had
to be secure. We went for the
three-fold doors because we
decided we’re not going to try to
put my extra-long Volvo station
wagon or Tom’s extra-long Ford
van in here. I was carpool central
at that point—lots of kids in the
neighborhood were going to
Waldorf School where I taught,
so I had a car full of kids in the
morning, and Tom is a painter
with scaffolds and ladders. So
after a while it wasn’t so feasible
to make the tight turn into the
garage so we quit parking in
here and decided when we had
an opportunity to dedicate it to
vegetable drops that that was a
good thing. So we do that from
the third week in June to about
Thanksgiving.
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
N: We thought we were going to
use it for cars! Though we did
have a long-term goal of turning
it into a studio because Tom’s
a painter. We thought, when he
gets old and can’t keep up the
3,000 square foot studio he’s got
six blocks away—with thirteenfoot
north light windows—or
when we can’t afford that, he’ll
give that up, and he’ll totter out
the back of the house in his old
age …
Thomas: That’s where I’m about at
now!
N: …and he’ll make tiny paintings.
Tom decided when he got old, he
would paint small.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
N: We put the three-fold door
replacement in. It is very difficult
for us to open, but that’s not a
problem for us. We don’t want it
to be easy to open. So only the
drivers and us really know how to
open the door. It can’t be opened
from the outside at all, you have
to come in and pop the bar there.
When we had to re-roof it, it still
had the original roof—the house
and garage date from 1918. It is
a beautiful brick garage, but the
roof was going. So we replaced
it, and when we took the roof off,
the light was so beautiful! Tom
scored those skylight windows
from a neighbor’s back porch.
The proportion is based on both
the windows and the Golden
Mean. Salvaged windows and an
aesthetic and you’ve got beauty.
T: To make it a working studio in
the winter, you would have to
insulate a little maybe, or put a
nice Yukon stove in here. Maybe it
should be a bathhouse!
62 63
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
N: This is the best block in town,
I can tell you without a doubt!
We had a basketball hoop on
our garage, so all the kids on the
block played basketball after
school with my son. Four houses
of us raised our kids together, so
we cut through the wire fences
between the houses—every time
someone renovated and threw
out a gate, we would score the
gate and put it in the fences
between our houses. When the
kids were two, they could run
between all the houses and
play in the backyards without
us having to worry about them
getting into the alley. And then
once they were big enough to
play in the alley, they played in
the alley.
T: Down on the corner, the guys
played basketball every Saturday
morning.
Rebel Garage Archive
N: We have a very active social
block. It maybe started with us
all eating together. All the kids I
taught would come over after
school and they would all be
playing here, or I’d pick them
up from their various daycares.
Around dinner time, we would
all say, “Who’s got what?” “I’ve
got bread,” “I’ve got a chicken,”
“I’ve got soup,” “We can eat at
my house.” We ate together
five nights a week, and on the
weekends, we would grill.
T: The block is still a good block!
We go to a block party every
summer. There’s three BBQs in
the summer. We just use our
backyards.
N: We invite all four houses and
all of our friends, so it’s a packed
BBQ. It’s a potluck. Those are big.
“Soup night”—next door to us,
they are Evangelical Christians
and believe in feeding the world
and being neighborly, so they
started soup night. Once a month
in the winter—from November to
Easter—they host Soup Night on
Sunday late afternoon. They’re
the next generation. People bring
homemade bread and cookies—
we eat well on this block! With
the CSA, I go to block parties
with huge trays of french
radishes, sweet butter and sea
salt. It’s good.
Parking: I have sixty to seventy
to eighty people who have boxes
to pick up. And sometimes those
boxes are shared, so it is a lot of
traffic. You see the sign on the
back windows: please don’t park
in front of the neighbors’ garages!
Because that’s the only thing that
just drives my alley neighbors
nuts. When they need to get in
and out—there’s three or four
or five cars in the alley, double
parked or triple parked. We try to
work that out.
I had a neighbor across the way,
a single guy now, and he was irate
last summer! I mean really irate.
He called me and said, “I need
to talk to you about this.” So I
invited him over, I showed him the
garage. And I said, “Do you know
what we’re doing here?” And he
said, “I don’t know, but whatever
it is, it is just bizarre.” I said, “This
is what we’re doing.” I introduced
him to the idea of the CSA, I gave
him a box of vegetables, and the
guy went away happy. He said,
“Maybe I’ll subscribe!”
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
N: Well, my daughter has chickens
in her side yard. We had a rabbit
hutch under the house, and a
chicken coop! Mr. Conroy does a
motorcycle repair with his sons.
T: Not anymore—the boys are
grown now and have their own
shop.
N: They rented a mutual space,
the five of them!
T: I just picked up my car from a
mechanic who moonlights in his
garage. There are a lot of guys
who have their shop in their
garage.
N: I don’t think there’s anyone
who is crazy enough to think they
could have a bath in their garage.
The kids did think that they could
move in here and that this would
be their home—this was going to
be their retreat.
64 65
OWNER Thomas & Nancy
USE CSA Pickup
LOCATION Ravenswood Manor
67
AN
INTERVIEW
WITH
RENEE
Renee has a custom garage with
space for parking, a Community
Supported Agriculture (CSA)
pick-up, a generous roof
deck, and outdoor space for
gardening. Renee worked with
an architect to prioritize
sustainable designs for the
structure.
Rebel Garage Archive
What do you use your
garage for?
Renee: For the car. For CSA
pick-up. For the garden. For
the outdoor deck. Partially for
storage, though we try to keep it
very clean. You don’t know what
the other one looked like, this
is night and day! We don’t have
parties here, but probably we
should! We do get together with
people up on the deck.
Do you drive? Is your garage
ever used for parking?
R: Yes, but not on Wednesdays,
so people can pick up their food
[at the CSA].
Did you imagine using your
garage this way when you
moved in? How has it changed
over time?
R: When we moved in, with our
old garage, we could not do
any of this. But when we built
this new one, we designed it
specifically so we could do these
kinds of things. We didn’t know
about the CSA at the time, but to
do gardening, and the green roof,
that was all part of the original
project. We started doing the
CSA six years ago, soon after we
got the new garage.
What kind of changes to your
garage have you made to
accommodate your uses?
R: Being built sustainably was
the overriding mantra: can we
find things that were recycled,
that are recyclable? The green
roof, because of all the good
things that a green roof does
besides being pretty. We moved
the garage over - the old one
had been further towards the
house, and we moved it over
this way, further out to the alley.
It has made it a bit difficult to
park, but we’ve learned to do
it. Just having a deck, that was
important, too. What we would
re-do: for people who want a
garden, pay close attention to
the roof line, a non-peaked roof
cuts out more sun.
Do you have relationships with
your alley neighbors? What’s
your block’s alley culture?
R: Interestingly, we know some
of the people on the alley more
than we know people across the
street. We’re really good friends
with the people next door: how
many neighbors will build you a
raised bed and a cage and all the
rest? We’re really good friends
with people who are diagonally
across the alley from us. And we
know people scattered along the
alley. When you’re out working
in the garden, people will come
by and you talk. In some ways
we do know people back here
more than in the front. We had
a rain garden in the front a few
years ago - and the first year,
you have to water it; we saw a lot
of people that way. But there is
an alley culture of knowing each
other. There was a block party
for people living on either side of
the alley, so that was fun, too.
Are there other ways in your
neighborhood that residents
creatively misuse private or
public space?
R: The kids certainly play in the
alley, then they grow up and they
don’t. Street hockey and things
like that. There was a garage
where the teenage son had a
rock band. They do still practice!
That’s one example. Kids learn to
ride their bikes in the alley.
68 69
OWNER Renee
USE CSA Pickup
LOCATION Ravenswood Manor
ALLEYS:
B-SIDES, IN
BETWEENS,
SPACES OF
EXCHANGE
Describing the unique, fraught, and complex
worlds of Chicago’s alleys.
ABOVE This first plat
map of Chicago, drawn
by James Thompson
in 1830, shows the
establishment of alleys
in residential blocks.
1. Moser, Whet.
“Chicago’s Alleys and Its
Growing, Hidden Green
Infrastructure.” Chicago
Magazine, October
2012.
ONLY LARGE cities of a certain age have alleys—
“New York is too old […] and Los Angeles too
young.”¹ Alleys were established after the Land
Ordinance of 1785 imposed a grid iron plan on
the nation west of the Ohio River, partitioning
land into increasingly smaller orthogonal
territories: from township to section, all the
way until the city block, the dividing alley, and
the building lot. In the early 1900S, alleys were
infrastructural thoroughfares: arteries for coal
delivery, human and horse waste storage, and
the collection, and sometimes burning, of trash.
Alleys provided urban infrastructure for services
which dealt with the negative externalities of
domestic architecture and provided the fuel
for heating and cooking, before these needs
were modernized into sewage systems, trash
pick-up, the electrical grid, and citywide gas
Alleys: B-Sides, In Betweens, Spaces of Exchange
distribution. Additionally,
the alleys were intended as
designated service corridors
for peddlers, tradespeople,
and solicitors, who—in
wealthy neighborhoods—were
not wanted on the main
street and at the front door.
During this period, in poorer
neighborhoods, alleys also
had other uses: according
to Tenement Conditions in
Chicago, a report from 1901
by sociologist Robert Hunter,
alleys in less affluent areas
were “common property” that,
though “wretchedly neglected,” were a “vital
necessity,” serving as “playgrounds” for children
of tenements and providing light and ventilation
to otherwise overcrowded buildings.²
After the postwar period, urban planning values
in the U.S. shifted away from alleys. Alleys
were reframed as wasteful uses of space and
in many cases, planning shifted instead to the
sprawling, curvilinear streets of the suburban
enclave. Alleys in Chicago—all 1,900 miles of
them—remained, but became primarily used
for parking cars, as well as continuing to be a
site for trash pick-up. Today, Chicago’s alleys are
present in 98% of residential blocks across the
city, and they are vastly different in character.
Their unique cultures and conditions reflect the
similarly diverse neighborhoods they exist in.
Additionally, alleys take on their own characters
based on the residents whose garages line their
sides. Some alleys are divided by gender: men fix
TOP Photograph
from the publication
Tenement Conditions
in Chicago (City Homes
Association, 1901) by
Robert Hunter.
ABOVE “The Traveling
Garbage Burner of
Chicago,” Scientific
American, 1893.
2. City Homes
Association and
Robert Hunter.
Tenement Conditions in
Chicago. (City Homes
Association, 1901).
74 75
ABOVE Tokyo roji ,
photograph by Takashi
Yasui, 2016.
3. “City of Chicago ::
Green Alleys.” https: /
www.cityofchicago.org/
city/en/depts/cdot/
provdrs/street/svcs/
green_alleys.html.
their cars with the garage doors
open and boys play hockey or
basketball. Some alleys bring
communities together—such
as in Ravenswood, where
annually neighbors organize
a day of garage sales with
attendant music events,
food, and gatherings. Other
alleys are divisive—such as in
neighborhoods where they
provide thorough-fares for
crime or speeding cars seeking
shortcuts. Some are wellmaintained,
such as those that
have been renovated through
the Chicago Department of
Transportation’s “green alley program,” which
aims to provide better stormwater drainage,
bright long-lasting led lights, and other
sustainable features.³ Others continue to be
ridden with potholes: sites of repeat complaints
to 311 without action, and lit only by firecrackers
set off on the fourth of July.
What will alleys look like in the future? In the
past hundred years, Chicago’s alleys have shifted
in response to historical change. How can
Chicagoans’ desires and ambitions now lead a
transformation for the future?
In other cities, alleys have taken on diverse
characters: in Japan, “little streets” called roji
are slow spaces for pedestrians, filled with
plants, rainwater collection, shrines, and small
commercial spaces. In Melbourne, “laneways”
emerged from pedestrian use and more ad-hoc
Alleys: B-Sides, In Betweens, Spaces of Exchange
lot sizes, rather than from rigid city planning.
Today, Melbourne’s “laneways” are filled with
small restaurants, bars, commercial and art
spaces, and other gathering spots. In recent
years, Vancouver has introduced legislation
that allows for the construction of “laneway”
homes, rentable residential units—not unlike
the Chicago coach house. Other cities have
holistically developed their alleys as tourist and
commercial attractions, such as San Francisco’s
Chinatown⁴ and Seattle’s Nord Alley, which also
functions as a site for public art.
In some ways, Chicago is defined by its
in-between spaces, urban traces of nowoutdated
infrastructure which permeate the
city’s seemingly hyper-organized fabric: alleys,
firescapes, roof landscapes, gangways, vaulted
sidewalks, or the space under the L-tracks. In
gray zones, such as easements, and rights-ofway,
these in-between urban spaces often make
way for unique cultures and interactions: a
kiss on a rooftop while watching fireworks; a
scrapper’s unexpected find in a back alley; a
cascade of sparks from an L-track unexpectedly
illuminating a late-night walk home from the
night shift.
What do Chicagoans want for the future of these
spaces, and how can Chicagoans continue to
participate in and be collectively responsible
for the future of alleys, beyond their everyday
activities? How can we advocate for and carve
out legislative and urban space for alleys and
adjacent garages, so they can continue to
function as productive B-side spaces: as unique
environments for cultural, ecological, and
economic exchange?
4. Chinatown Alley
Way Renovation
Program from 1998,
by San Francisco
Public Works, for the
Chinatown Community
Development Center.
More at: http: /
sfpublicworks.org/
project/chinatownalleyway-renovationprogram.
76 77
NINE
POLICY
PROPOSALS
What is a “garage” in the eyes of the law?
Today, a variety of intersecting regulations in
Chicago’s Municipal Code, Building Code, and
Zoning Ordinance regulate the architecture,
location, and use of garages in the city. Here
are nine policy proposals which aim to provoke
conversations about the rights and restrictions
which govern our garages today, and the ways
that these frameworks might evolve in the
future to accommodate or inspire change.
Let’s set new limits and
create new opportunities!
#1: REBEL BLOCKS
ORGANIZE AND LIMIT
“REBEL BLOCKS”
AT THE CITY SCALE
The Chicago zoning ordinance currently has a regulatory
mechanism called an “overlay district.” The ordinance describes
this regulation as a tool for “special situations or to accomplish
specific city goals that cannot be easily or efficiently addressed
through the use of base districts.” Currently in the city, thirteen
zoning overlays exist which add either additional rights or
restrictions to a certain area. This proposal introduces a “Rebel
Block district overlay,” which would allow more creative uses of
garages, while also opening the opportunity to set new limits
on heights, areas, and signage. These “Rebel Blocks” could
allow the rebel garage ethos to be limited to areas where an
entire block of Chicagoans have decided together to allow the
following transformations in their alleys. The overlay district
would also allow the city overall to regulate the locations of rebel
garage alley blocks—for example, in consideration of existing
base districts, nearby other incentive programs such as transitoriented
development, or in partnership with city programs,
such as the Dollar Lot Program which is already often used by
Chicagoans to create suburban-style garages and driveways.
This overlay district would allow for an urban-scale calibration
of the following proposed changes, as well as a time-based
approach which might introduce prototype or pilot-versions of
these code revisions over a longer period of time.
Nine Policy Proposals
80 81
OPPOSITE An example
of the way the “Rebel
Block” code changes
could be applied to
limited areas in the
city, based on location,
need, or consensus.
LEFT “Rebel Blocks”
could also be
designated through
collaborative decision
making at the scale of
a neighborhood, such
as if all block residents
agree.
Nine Policy Proposals
82 83
#2: DIVERSIFY
BUSINESSES
STARTUP DIVERSE
BUSINESSES
IN YOUR GARAGE
Let's remove these
from the law, so we
can do them!
Imagine an alley where you can buy fresh eggs, have your
fortune told, and get your oil changed—all by your neighbors.
Currently, Chicago businesses that operate out of residents’
homes are regulated by the Municipal Code. This code limits
what kinds of businesses can be located in a domestic space.
However, the landscape of small businesses is transforming
in the context of the sharing and “gig” economies, freelance
labor, and the increasing number of individuals pursuing selfemployment
outside of 9-to-5 jobs for economic or personal
reasons. Additionally, commercial space in Chicago can often
be difficult to secure for new businesses, especially women and
minority-owned businesses with less access to initial investment
capital, as they are often restricted to longer-term leases in
the 3- to 5-year range. Recent trends in “micro-retail,” such as
small commercial spaces and pop-up shops, have started to
address these issues through new building types. In contrast,
this proposal takes advantage of existing small buildings by
expanding the range of businesses that can be operated out
of one’s own home—including the garage—to construct an
infrastructure for small-scale entrepreneurship.
Nine Policy Proposals
84 85
BELOW Landscaping,
salon, and auto shop—a
few of the many types
of businesses which
are currently prohibited
from being licensed
for home (or garage)
occupation. What would
it be like to share your
alley with neighbors
and their clients running
these businesses?
Nine Policy Proposals
86 87
#3: BIGGER HOME
BUSINESSES
TAKE OVER THE
GARAGE WITH YOUR
HOME BUSINESS
Remove the square
footage restrictions!
Steve Jobs famously started Apple in his garage. How many other
significant businesses may have started in the unique space of
the garage: out of the traffic, bustle, and quotidian burdens of the
main house? Can we describe the Chicago garage as a possible
space of dreams? Currently, the Municipal Code regulates how
garages can be used by home occupation businesses. The code
dictates that a garage cannot be the primary site of your work:
according to the code, the garage can only be used to store extra
papers and documents for business. This proposal allows the
main work of home businesses to expand into garages and also
removes the overall square footage restriction that limits the size
of home offices to 300 square feet. This change, which has also
been proposed by Chicago’s Small Business Advocacy Council,
reflects how many Chicagoans already see the garage as an
architectural type which can incubate, foster, and provide the
unique necessary conditions for starting something new.
Nine Policy Proposals
88 89
Take a conference call in
your basement office
Engage with clients in the garage
ABOVE This section of
a building shows the
way a business might
be expanded from the
home into the yard
and garage, creating
a bigger and more
diverse space for work.
Hold a meeting in your yard
Nine Policy Proposals
90 91
#4: HANG YOUR
SHINGLE
DESIGN GARAGES
TO REFLECT HOW
THEY’RE USED
Two vanguards of architecture’s post-modern movement,
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott-Brown, famously
described two ways that buildings can be designed to
convey (or “signify”) their uses to the public: “the duck” or
the “decorated shed.” “The duck” uses its shape or figure to
convey an idea, such as the basket-shaped headquarters of a
basket manufacturer. The “decorated shed,” in comparison,
is a simple, utilitarian building with a large exterior sign;
in this case, Venturi and Scott Brown were inspired by Las
Vegas roadside motels and convenience stores. In Chicago,
the Municipal Code currently restricts home occupation
businesses from displaying signs, having dedicated
entrances, or using shelves to display wares. This proposal
argues that the “decorated shed” is an economically efficient
and symbolically powerful way to transform simple garages
into vibrant spaces open to the public. While preserving the
residential character of a main street has a certain value, this
proposal speculates that the alley sides of Chicago homes can
become a little more flexible.
Say yes to
“decorated sheds”!
Nine Policy Proposals
92 93
Exterior signs advertise
and help with navigation
LEFT This image
shows a garage
outfitted with three
currently prohibited
components: an
exterior sign, a
dedicated entrance,
and shelves to display
wares. How would
these components
support a growing
business or change the
character of an alley?
A dedicated entrance allows
for a more autonomous
business space
Interior shelves support
the exhibition of goods
and work products
Nine Policy Proposals
94 95
#5: EVERYONE’S INVITED
WELCOME OTHERS: MORE
CLIENTS, EMPLOYEES, AND
DELIVERIES
More people and
more deliveries!
Any small businesses owner will tell you their business is a
network of connected people, not individuals: they comprise
communities of clients, employees, supporters, investors,
friends, and colleagues. Currently, the Municipal Code restricts
the amount of people who can visit, be employed in, or make a
delivery to a home business. Building on the goals of Proposal
#3—which allows more areas of accessory building to be
dedicated to businesses—this change suggests increasing the
limits on daily visitors to a home business. Garages and alleys
in Chicago are already bustling quasi-public spaces. In our
interviews, we learned that alleys are often transformed into
social areas for different groups: from kids playing between a
block’s backyards, to residents fixing cars with the garage door
open, to teenagers playing an alley-long game of street hockey,
to a space of exchange driven by the daily passage of scrappers,
trash pick-up, and Craigslist swaps. By extending the limits on
the number of visiting clients, non-resident employees, and
daily deliveries that can visit a home business, this change
reflects the existing productive bustle and opens alleys to further
commercial traffic.
Nine Policy Proposals
96 97
Multiple outside employees
can contribute
LEFT This image shows
an active garage
hosting visiting
clients, non-resident
employees, and
multiple daily deliveries,
producing a vibrant
and collaborative
atmosphere.
More frequent deliveries
supported by alleys
Invite more than two visitors
at any given time
Nine Policy Proposals
98 99
#6: LEGALIZE COACH
HOUSES
BUILD NEW
COACH HOUSES
Bring back the
coach house!
Would it be convenient to have a guest house or a roommate’s
unit in the backyard? How about extra rental space which would
generate extra monthly income? Or a space for in-laws upon
the arrival of a new baby? When Chicago’s alleys were planned
at the turn of the century, they functioned as access lanes for
horse-drawn carriages. The small buildings flanking these
alleys were used to store coaches after returning home. Since
the car replaced the horse-drawn coach as a primary means of
transportation for Chicagoans, new small buildings along the
city’s alleys are designed for the size of the automobile. However,
coach houses that remained have been transformed for new
uses by their owners—many of them into dwelling units with
a bathroom and kitchen. Looking into the future, with ride
sharing and autonomous vehicles on the horizon reducing the
need for private cars—and increased concerns about combustion
engines’ negative effects on public health and the climate—this
proposal anticipates that alleys will transform once again.
Currently, Chicago’s zoning ordinance only allows certain
structures in the rear setback (the area between a house and an
alley) of a building’s lot. Allowances today currently include:
garage, shed, and shading structures like pergolas. This proposal
suggests bringing back the “coach house,” with limits at three
stories and up to 1,200 square feet.
Nine Policy Proposals
100 101
Nine Policy Proposals
ABOVE How can
the historical
categorization of the
“coach house”—a
larger building with
infrastructure like
gas or water—inspire
new, unexpected, and
diverse accessory
buildings in the future
such as those shown
here?
102 103
#7: GARAGE FIRST,
HOUSE SECOND
DEVELOP GARAGES
AS INVESTMENT
STRATEGIES
Nine Policy Proposals
Invest in architecture!
In the current zoning ordinance, garages are categorized as
“accessory buildings,” which is defined as a structure that is
secondary to a main house. By defining garages in this way,
the code also restricts owners from constructing them before
the main building. This change proposes that garages should
be allowed to be built first. In this way, garages might function
as early investments, fiscal collateral, or the first step in
phased construction. The Cook County Land Bank (cclba)
currently holds 4,000+ lots, all of which have been cleared for
back taxes and are made available to the buyer at sub-market
prices. However, in order to purchase a lot from cclba, one
is required to show the financial means to develop the site. If
accessory buildings were built first, this may allow a broader
populace to begin to invest in vacant lots. An auto-mechanic,
for example, might build a small garage and relocate his
business there—over time, he may eventually build the main
structure. A new family might build a coach house structure
to live in, while saving the funds to build a main house,
eventually transforming that accessory structure into a rental
unit for extra income. With this change, the city’s numerous
vacant lots, currently untended or being tended at a cost to the
city or county government, could be re-distributed to residents
more quickly by re-defining the “accessory structure” as a
cautious, but hopeful, architectural investment.
104 105
RIGHT Garages
constructed before
primary residences
could serve as
investment strategies,
neighborhood
resources, or support
other individual or
community needs.
Neighborhood residents
cultivate individual plots
and share resources
A community garden storage shed
in the space of a garage
Nine Policy Proposals
106 107
#8: NO PARKING
REDUCE PARKING
REQUIREMENTS
Nine Policy Proposals
Transportation is
changing, so should
laws.
In Chicago and other U.S. cities, there are currently stringent
parking requirements for dwelling units. These requirements
emerge from a post-war ideal of nuclear families organized
around an automobile-focused life. This proposal reflects
the way in which the landscape of 21st century domestic
space and transportation is more complex, diverse in its
forms, messy, and nuanced than the post-war ideal. While
some Chicagoans may continue to need space to park a
car, many others prefer to use that space for secondary uses
such as the ones described in the Rebel Garage Archive.
Additionally, we argue that the conditions of contemporary
transportation are moving away from privately owned
cars—just as it moved away from the horse-drawn coach
a century ago. For example, major cities such as Oslo are
banning cars from their downtowns and others, such as
Paris, are banning combustion engines entirely in the coming
decades. Additionally, in recent years, Chicago’s Department
of Transportation has been investing in urban streetscape
upgrades for bikes and pedestrians; in parallel, private
corporations are leading research toward shared autonomous
vehicles. By reducing parking requirements and providing the
option to use accessory buildings for creative secondary uses,
this proposal argues for a change in regulation to both reflect
and incentivize these broader changes in transportation.
108 109
LEFT This map shows
parcels within
residential zoning
(possible garage sites)
that fall within the
range of requirements
for Transit Oriented
Development, an
existing incentive to
develop business
or commercial lots
near public transport.
These areas might be
good candidates for
“Rebel Blocks,” where
parking for cars is
less necessary in lieu
of other modes of
transport.
KEY
Commercial
buildings within TOD
areas
Nine Policy Proposals
Residential buildings
withing TOD areas
110 111
#9 GARAGE
STARCHITECTURE
LET GARAGE
ARCHITECTURE
SHINE
Let’s make room for
experimental architecture!
Chicago garages are currently uniquely limited in their
architectural expression—both by regulation and by cost—in
terms of building systems, materials, size, and form. With
increasingly diverse uses occurring inside garages, this proposal
would allow for garage architecture to begin to reflect the plethora
of activities that are going on inside them. This proposal also
expands on current limitations in order to open up possibilities
for unexpected future activities. Could a garage be used as a
drone landing pad, a political organizing space, a kombucha
production kitchen, or another activity we have never seen
before? Second, Rebel Garages argues that the alley may be a
productive space for architectural experimentation off of the
main street. While consistent character of residential streets
has a certain value, we believe that the small scale and relative
affordability of accessory buildings might help cultivate a
potent testing ground for new building technologies. A garage or
accessory building may be a good site for architects or designers
to test new energy-efficient roofing details, or unconventional
exterior walls, using experimentation to drive architectural
innovation in Chicago. Already, alleys are sometimes known as
spaces of vice or quasi-legal activities, this change proposes that
the code make allowances for rebel or experimental architecture,
as well.
Nine Policy Proposals
112 113
LEFT These whimsical
garage buildings are
inspired by familiar
shapes in iconic
architecture. What
other shapes or
functions might emerge
in the future when we
stop assuming garages
are only for parking?
Nine Policy Proposals
114 115
CIVIC ASSETS:
IDENTIFYING
NEW PUBLIC
COMMONS
Re-thinking belonging on a civic scale through a
“rebellious” built environment.
ABOVE A Chicago block
party, at 68th St. and
Bennett St., temporarily
transforms a civic
asset—a street—into
a community space
through a simple
bureaucratic process.
What other assets
could be shared or
activated in temporary
ways? Image courtesy
of Eric Allix Rogers,
Creative Commons.
THE TERMS “city,” “civic,” and “civitas” blur:
they share etymological roots, describing
how we come together and the places where
we do so. Bound within these terms seems
to be the hope that we are indeed more than
the sum of our parts: in “civitas,” a political
body of people moving forward, in “civic”
assets, a belief in pooling together our
efforts toward shared infrastructure. Living
together in cities, where we are bound
together by law and often by choice, too,
public and shared spaces help us negotiate
our collective existence. On one hand, they
bring us together: the city square, the public
park, the playground drinking fountain,
or the eighteen-mile-long lakefront path.
On the other hand, these spaces also help
negotiate our relationships to one another,
Civic Assets: Identifying New Public Commons
holding us apart, by choreographing the
relational conditions between ourselves
and strangers, from the dotted line between
bike lane and car traffic, to the invisible
boundary lines between wards, to the
regulations of zoning which keep factories
and homes from emerging side-by-side.
However, none of these shared spaces in
and of themselves produce utopia or the
ideal of a democratic commons, as anyone
living with them knows. As often as not,
public spaces and civic assets produce
exclusion as well as inclusion. While a city
plaza can serve as a space of assembly,
congress, and dissent, it can also become
a site of control or discrimination by state
and private interests.
How can we re-think civic assets in the
future, so that they are both more public,
and more inclusive, and yet also speak
to transformations in economy and
technology? What kinds of spaces in the
city do we want and need to share and
communicate with our neighbors? Which
have the potential to be frameworks or
arenas for changing forms of collectivity?
The rebel garage represents the possibility
of a new type of civic asset, driven by
temporality and sharing, rather than
exclusively by ownership or fixed spatial
parameters. The recent so-called “sharing
economy” has expanded our architectural
and urban understandings of what can be
118 119
shared. Hosts for “couch surfers” put up
a single piece of furniture for overnight
use; Airbnb users may share a single room
or a whole apartment; early forms of ride
sharing acted as carpooling message boards
for strangers; with WeWork, one can rent
the space of a single desk for an hour. Yet
it is important to situate these conditions
of sharing both in space and in time.
They occur at a range of scales—consider
the national-scale removal of productive
agricultural land from the economy for
conservation for years at a time in the
federal Conservation Reserve Program—
all the way down to the operations of
“shiftbeds” in immigrant neighborhoods,
single-room occupancy buildings, or in-law
units in Chicago. The rebel garage and
affiliated alleys, which switch between
private use (parking) and public functions
(autoshop, CSA pick-up) with the simple
opening or closing of a garage door, point
another way that we could imagine the
idea of civic assets. These are assets which
could be durational, and even go so far as to
matching needs and spaces through nonmarket
transactions.
already bring their spaces into the public
realm—bringing them on- and off-line, so
to speak—could also be an infrastructure to
manage architectural and urban space on a
bigger scale? Could we schedule the use of a
public park for an hour? Could a ward own
a fleet of cars or bicycles through a network
of temporary loans? Could we contribute
our kitchens, backyards, or alleys toward
collective use, and then take them back
again at night?
In Chicago, there are already bureaucratic
and managerial frameworks for temporal
sharing of civic assets: take the permitting
of a city street for a block party, or the
creation of a temporary easement across
multiple properties for a common end.
What would it mean if the ways that people
Civic Assets: Identifying New Public Commons
120 121
CASE
STUDIES
How can we use policy to support, not shortcircuit,
heterogeneous ways of living in the city?
The rebel garage is just one example. In this
section, we explore four case studies—a parking
spot, a building, vacant lots, and excess asphalt—
to understand ways of developing infrastructure
that help cultivate collective life in the city.
CASE STUDY
ANDERSONVILLE
PARKLET
Chicago’s first “parklet,” a temporary green
space in a curbside parking lot, shows how
design can negotiate between neighborhood
needs and diverse stakeholders, and even
initiate a new city-wide permitting process.
1. For more on the
history and futures of
this kind of work, see
Mimi Zeiger’s four-part
series: Zeiger, Mimi.
“The Interventionist’s
Toolkit: 1-4.” Places
Journal, January
31, 2011. https: /doi.
org/10.22269/110131.
2. Erbentraut,
Joseph. “Chicago’s
Andersonville
Neighborhood
Could Be Home To
City’s Parklet Pilot
Program.” Huffington
Post, April 13, 2012,
sec. Chicago. https: /
www.huffingtonpost.
com/2012/04/13/
andersonville-chicagonei_n_1423950.html.
Case Studies
THE IDEA of a “parklet”—a parking spot
transformed into a temporary green space—
came of age in San Francisco in the early 2000s,
within a wave of other “tactical urbanism” or
“placemaking” projects intended to heighten
engagement and participation in public space.¹
Chicago arrived slightly later to the trend in
2012, when Andersonville became the home
of the city’s first parklet.² The parklet was
organized by the Andersonville Development
Corporation and coordinated by Brian
Bonnano, the group’s Director of Sustainability
Initiatives at the time. The project was
ultimately the product of a collaboration of
many stakeholders, including neighborhood
businesses, architects and designers, Chicago’s
Department of Transportation (cdot), as
well as supporters from throughout the city.
Because it was the city’s first project of the
kind, it required careful negotiation between
stakeholders. These included: Chicago Parking
Meters (cpm), the private company which
runs neighborhood parking spaces; the ward’s
alderman; the businesses which ceded parking
spaces to pedestrian use; and cdot, which had
never permitted a project of this kind before;
as well as more traditional buy-in and support
from community residents and business
owners. The final parklet was designed by the
Chicago architecture firm Moss Design. The
goals of the project had been initially tested
through a series of temporary structures and
pop-up events, such as a temporary garden in
front of the Swedish American Museum, which
acted as research into ideas for the parklet’s
functions and design. The success of the
parklet was eventually used in part as a model
for cdot’s Make Way For People program, a
process for permitting right-of-way spaces in
the city such as alleys, streets, and parking
spaces for placemaking activities.
BELOW Built Andersonville
Parklet. Image courtesy of
Brian Bonanno.
124 125
3. Bonnano, Brian,
Craig Reschke, and
Ann Lui. Rebel Garages
interview with Brian
Bonnano. Video call,
February 23, 2017.
The development and negotiation of a
permitting process for the parklets also
helped define the values of the Andersonville
project, as well as the points where design
and regulation intersected. In an interview,
Bonnano said, “the City had initially set design
guidelines…they wanted only tables and chairs
which would fold up and go away at the end of
the day. The parklet [in that case] could only be
usable when it was associated with a business
nearby and when that business was open. That
to me just didn’t make a lot of sense, because
our neighborhood was busy at all times of
the day. It would also make people feel like it
wasn’t a public space and it would make them
feel like they would have to buy something. […]
We were really adamant about opportunities
for interaction.”³ These original regulatory
ideas changed to reflect the project’s emphasis
on publicness. Since then, more parklets—as
well as designs aimed at regenerating or
highlighting other city-owned spaces—have
been built following cdot’s guidelines
developed, in part, through this initial venture.
expansion of Chicago’s prolific existing block
parties where parking spaces are replaced
with BBQ grills, inflatable bounce houses, and
lawn chairs. Second, the Andersonville parklet
represents a case study in the permitting of
space that is both private (parking spaces
usually dedicated to adjacent businesses, or
spaces owned by a private company) and public
(open to, and intended for, community use) by
using architecture and design to bridge those
worlds. Lastly, this pilot project served as a
model for broader policy transformations in
cdot’s permitting practices, allowing city-wide
changes to be tested and experimented first in a
specific place and time.
Case Studies
The Andersonville Parklet is an important
Chicago case study for Rebel Garages. First, it
represents the creation of a policy or form of
regulation around an existing spatial practice,
allowing that practice to grow and transform,
while respecting the needs of various
stakeholders. The parklet can be read, in a
way, as an expansion of the existing practice
of dibs: when neighborhood residents, during
winter time, use furniture to hold parking spots
they’ve shoveled out. It can also be read as an
126 127
CASE STUDY
MUEBLES
SULLIVAN
In Mexico City, this experimental commercial
space shows how architects can engage public
space by designing through atmosphere,
unexpected uses, and a good playlist, rather
than walls and roofs.
Case Studies
TO UNDERSTAND Muebles Sullivan, one has
to imagine it first at the center of many
whirring networks—architects, friends,
collaborators, professionals—which themselves
are constantly changing and transforming.
Because on one hand, Muebles Sullivan can
be defined as a physical space in Mexico City,
on the ground floor of an early building by the
city’s most celebrated architect Luis Barragán,
and the size of a small store. On the other
hand, the spirit of Muebles Sullivan completely
eludes its physical characteristics; for instance
the decades-spanning, multicultural YouTube
karaoke songs which play there every Thursday
and Friday night, attracting sweaty, glittering,
illuminated groups of friends who frequently
spill outside singing in the street. Muebles
Sullivan is profoundly temporal, ecstatic even,
and it transforms beneath your eyes.
By day Muebles Sullivan is, as its name
implies, a furniture store on Avenida Sullivan.
It sells custom white steel furniture of limited
selection: a stool, a table, a shelf, in a range of
different sizes. This furniture was originally
designed by aprdelesp, a young architecture
collaborative. Also on sale on Muebles Sullivan:
“Furniture for Public Use,”—cast concrete
street furniture, plus “plants, coffee, popsicles,
beer,”—typically 40 oz. Coronas—and “wine,
and photocopies.” aprdelesp is known
for their work in experimental commercial
spaces—each of which they design and
operate—challenging others to rethink the
definitions of public space through the lens
of stores, restaurants, and shops. In Muebles
Sullivan, the most important architectural
ABOVE Muebles Sullivan
by day. Image courtesy
of APRDELESP.
128 129
1. Cesarman, Rodrigo
Escandon, Guillermo
Gonzalez Ceballos,
Craig Reschke,
and Ann Lui. Rebel
Garages interview with
APRDELESP. In person
recording, March 23,
2017.
BELOW The same
space transformed
into an experimental
commercial space at
night. Image courtesy
of APRDELESP.
component isn’t something built, but instead
is an unexpected encounter. In an interview
with aprdelesp, they said, “The [space is]
completely open. It’s on the same level as the
street and there’s no threshold between the
private space and the sidewalk, so when we
do karaoke in there, it’s almost like karaoke
in the street.” ¹ This lack of a threshold allows
for the temporal transformation of the space
from a commercial interior during the day, to a
sprawling public hangout at night.
Muebles Sullivan gives a new lens through
which to understand rebel garages. First, its
temporal qualities: an (almost traditional)
commercial space by day and casual karaoke
spot by night reflected the ways that “rebel”
use of garages is often layered, where
activities alternate with parking, either daily
or seasonally. Second, its vibrant use of a
small square footage, which, by spilling out
into the sidewalk through atmospheric rather
than architectural strategies, helps delineate
the way that alley culture is an integral, not
accessory, component of the rebel garage.
Third, Muebles Sullivan thrives in the way it
is used and through the furniture and other
props which support its users, rather than
its larger architectural form or components.
Maybe karaoke, which—as undertaken by the
participants at Muebles Sullivan—gives us a
way to all sing together, can be understood
through the idea of a “relational object”:
something that both assembles and mediates
that assembly, which can be as simple as a
table and as complex as a city. Both Muebles
Sullivan and Chicago’s rebel garages
challenge us to rethink architecture as a group
karaoke: transformative and atmospheric,
requiring both risk and investment, and at
its core, nothing more and nothing less than
a framework for mediating togetherness
between people.
Case Studies
130 131
CASE STUDY
COOK COUNTY
LAND BANK
ASSOCIATION
Chicago’s Cook County Land Bank Association
is responsible for vacant lots, which are
together becoming increasingly understood
as a ubiquitous civic asset when re-imagined
through a broad range of uses.
THE COOK COUNTY LAND BANK ASSOCIATION
(cclba) is a governmental unit which responds
to systemic conditions in the built environment.
It introduces new ways to respond to big
problems with the long-term goal of responding
to community needs and growth, rather than
the dominant logic of the real estate market.
Land banks, of which there are 120 in the
United States, are either government entities or
non-profits tasked with responding to issues of
residential, commercial, and land vacancy, often
in underserved neighborhoods or cities. Many are
more familiar with the City of Chicago’s “Large
Lots” program, which sells vacant lots for $1 to
neighborhood residents, which operates through
many of the same modes. The cclba has a
similar mandate except from Cook County and
with broader jurisdiction in its efforts.
or distressed properties for low or no cost; clear
back taxes; hold land without paying property
tax; and rent properties for temporary use.
cclba currently works to hand over these
properties—for a nominal cost—to either
developers who have the funding to rehabilitate
properties to market rate, or individual
homeowners (starting in 2017) to purchase a
home for themselves. The cclba currently lists
over 5,000 properties on its website for sale. As
a case study for Rebel Garages, cclba’s efforts
illuminate the way that policy can respond to
on-the-ground conditions, existing uses, and
local needs.
From a distance, cclba’s impact may seem to
register only on the large scale, and over a long
period of time, as it vets and moves property
to responsible developers and homeowners.
On closer inspection, cclba reveals how
legislation around the built environment can
also make space for more speedy change or
BELOW Cook County
Land Bank Association’s
web interface showing
current holdings
available for purchase.
Case Studies
Through unique powers legislated to cclba,
the organization is able to acquire the vacant
132 133
1. Rose, Rob, Craig
Reschke, and Ann
Lui. Rebel Garages
interview with Rob
Rose. In person
interview, February 23,
2017.
informal use. During an interview with Rebel
Garages, cclba Director Rob Rose remarked
that some neighborhoods at any given time
can only attract or sustain a certain quantity
of new market-rate housing; consequently, the
group was also interested in temporary or more
informal ways that vacant lots might be used
in support of the community while waiting for
demand to increase.¹ In light of this, cclba has
donated lots to urban farms and community
gardens, as well as to community groups such
as Mothers Against Senseless Killing (mask)
which uses a cclba vacant lot to hold events,
vigils, and gatherings. By thinking through the
ways that urban space can be used temporarily,
as well as treating neighborhood assets as
long-term investments, cclba is a unique case
of using policy as a nimble tool to respond to
contemporary urban conditions.
Case Studies
134
CASE STUDY
MAKE WAY
FOR PEOPLE
PROGRAM
This permitting process allows for new types
of interventions in Chicago’s public way. The
project supports communities and designers
by encouraging them to engage and develop
unconventional uses of space.
Case Studies
HOW CAN a city’s government—through
ordinances, permitting strategies, and
funding—help support informal gatherings
or non-traditional uses of urban space? Does
the establishment of official programs for
these efforts help facilitate the ephemeral and
hard-to-define ways that people come together,
or hinder them by turning on the spotlight?
Can the increasingly diverse ways the city’s
neighborhoods operate, grow, and struggle
begin to be regulated from the top-down with
productive ends? Make Way For People, a
program run by Chicago’s Department of
Transportation (CDOT), begins to answer
some of these questions within Chicago’s
unique urban and political contexts.
The program is part of the “Chicago Complete
Streets” initiative, a direction which highlights
the importance of sharing the street between
cars, pedestrians, buses, and bikes, as well
as investing in infrastructure sustainability
upgrades. Make Way For People is a vehicle to
support “placemaking” efforts, defined by cdot
as both the creation of more walkable and
enjoyable spaces, as well as the strengthening
of a place’s identity, through temporary
and lightweight interventions. Make Way
For People is comprised by four categories
of possible interventions, each of which is
circumscribed by a type of space that cdot
traditionally oversees (in contrast to privatelyowned
property or other spaces controlled by
Chicago’s Park District). These four categories
include: “People Spots” (parking spaces
administered by Chicago Parking Meters
(CPM)); “People Streets” (“excess” asphalt
areas); “People Plazas” (plazas, triangles, legacy
pedestrian malls); and “People Alleys.”
Each of these types of spaces faces its own
unique challenges and issues; each has
been activated by different individuals and
groups. Chicago’s six People Spots have been
empirically evaluated as successful, driving
visitors to and keeping them in certain areas;
however, their numbers pale in comparison to
other cities (San Francisco, according to the
Chicago Tribune, has more than 50 parklets
and with half of our city’s population). Projects
executed so far under the aegis of the program
include Boombox, a series of retail kiosks
designed and operated by Chicago-based
Latent Design; parklets throughout the city,
primarily on the north side; Lincoln Hub, an
intervention of bright colored street paint in
Lakeview; and The Last Mile, a temporary
136 137
installation in an alley by the
Good City Group, an urban
design collective, which
highlighted a shortcut often
used by neighborhood residents
in Jefferson Park to get to the
neighborhood CTA station.
ABOVE Lincoln Hub, a
placemaking project
in Lakeview. Image
courtesy of John
Greenfield, Streetsblog
Chicago.
Outside of the specifics of
Make Way For People and the
successes and shortcomings
of its individual projects, the
program’s significance can be understood
through two important lenses. First, it
represents a critical re-reading, by cdot,
of the spaces it administers as not strictly
“infrastructural” but ultimately public in
nature. This re-reading transforms excess
asphalt on the street, parking spaces, and odd
leftover triangles into public space—not in the
sense that it falls within the oversight of the
city, but in the sense that they are spaces which
can be ceded to city residents for our own ends.
Second, Make Way For People articulates the
idea that streamlining a permitting process—
that making bureaucratic processes more
transparent, illustrative, and essentially legible
in character—is itself a creative act, one which
makes way for others to undertake creative acts
of their own. These two ways of understanding
and regulating urban space are central to the
project of Rebel Garages.
Case Studies
138
ACKNOWLEDGE-
MENTS
We would like to thank the City of Chicago
Department of Cultural Affairs and Special
Events, whose IncentOvate grant helped
support the research and production of this
publication. A special thank you to UrbanLab
Co-Founders Martin Felsen and Sarah Dunn,
whose exhibition 50 Designers, 50 Ideas, 50
Wards originally inspired this project, and
to Chicago Architecture Center President
& CEO Lynn Osmond for encouraging its
further investigation. Thanks also to Ron
Kirkpatrick, who pointed us toward some
unique garages in his neighborhood. We're
grateful to all of the garage rebels who
allowed us into their homes and spoke to us
for this project in the past three years.
Ann Lui and Craig Reschke
Future Firm
Michael Wood
Chicago Architecture Center
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