May 17, 2026Over their more than two decades of working together, Nate Berkus and Lauren Buxbaum Gordon have developed their own design language — a way of communicating (sometimes even finishing each other’s sentences) shaped as much by their long friendship as by their simpatico aesthetic instincts.
“Lauren and I share a rare shorthand,” Berkus says. “It’s a true collaboration that makes our work stronger and more genuine. We’re not just designers — we’re partners, parents and people with full lives. That perspective shapes how we approach every project.”
Now that Berkus is based in Manhattan, Buxbaum Gordon oversees projects from THEIR firm‘s Chicago office, which Berkus founded more than three decades ago, when he was just 24. So when Ann Brady Gorran, a friend of Berkus’s sister, asked for help with the decor of a residence in the latter city’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, Buxbaum Gordon took the lead — but not before conferring with Berkus to get his take. “We have casual sidebars all the time,” she says. “He’ll give creative input, and then off I go.”
In this case, she credits Berkus with an idea that helped set the stylistic direction for the redesign of the home, composed of a pair of 19th-century brick row houses that were combined by previous owners into a single 7,000-square-foot, six-bedroom residence. He suggested adding sleek iron-and-glass doors to divide the living room from the entry and repeating this detail upstairs for the shower enclosure in the primary bath. This contemporary intervention in the historic building proved transformative. “The glass and iron give both an industrial feel and a French vibe,” Buxbaum Gordon says. “It made everything feel a little bit edgier.”
That youthful spark suited the owners perfectly. Brady Gorran is a former fashion-magazine editor who is poised to open a Chicago boutique, Givànne, that she describes as an “in-person, all-year-round gift guide.” She and her husband, Scott, who works in finance, were living in Greenwich Village when, over dinner during a visit to Chicago, they found themselves daydreaming about moving to that city. They would have more space to raise their young son there, and she would be closer to her midwestern family. “What started as dinner conversation turned into house hunting,” Buxbaum Gordon says.
They saw a listing in Lincoln Park and decided to go for it. The former owners had done a major renovation with the help of SPACE Architects + Planners, resulting in a six-bay-wide townhouse with modern amenities and generous proportions. After years of neglect, the Italianate facade had been fully restored, with double-hung windows and a covered porch reconstructed based on clues in the brickwork.
The renovation retained the original two front doors — an architectural quirk the designers had to address in the interior. “One set of doors was in the entry and the other was in the living room,” Buxbaum Gordon says. “I went to Nate and said, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ ” Together, they devised a solution, placing in front of the problematic elements a screen that opened to the living room and concealing them further with curtains.
With complete trust in the designers’ instincts, the clients pushed them to be adventurous. One of their first requests was to have a wine lounge in place of a a dining room. “That was a curveball,” says Buxbaum Gordon, who admits waking up at four in the morning thinking about how to pull it off. “I wrestled with it for a while, then all of a sudden, the lightbulb went off.”
Her fix was to fashion a glamorous space that reads like a sitting room but functions discreetly as a wine bar, with refrigerators hidden behind cerused-oak cabinetry. Furnishings include a wraparound blush-velvet sectional — edged with bouillon fringe and topped with cushions in Dedar tiger velvet — which is a favorite perch for the clients’ young son and his friends by day and an equally compelling hangout for adults at night.
Brady Gorran proved a game client, quickly green-lighting everything from the entry’s orange-and-black checkered tile to the conversion of half of the two-car garage into a home gym. “Nobody in Chicago does that,” Buxbaum Gordon jokes of the latter, noting that the Gorrans are a one-car family, and their home is within walking distance of “a bunch of great restaurants and their child’s school.” Brady Gorran also embraced the designers’ numerous vintage finds, many sourced on 1stDibs, including the living room’s Arturo Pani coffee table, Stilnovo chandelier and Arlus sconces.
Inevitably, a young family ends up spending much of their time in the kitchen. Here, as everywhere in the home, the designers applied their shared aesthetic vocabulary. One thing they always agree on is to choose sustainability wherever possible. “The kitchen had recently been renovated, and we didn’t want to rip things out,” Brady Gorran says.
Still, Brady Gorran needed a bit more style. The designers’ interventions were largely cosmetic — a checkerboard backsplash, green mid-century Italian lanterns over the island and a wall of artisanal plates — but bring maximum personality to the space. “The room had to look like Ann,” Buxbaum Gordon says. “So we put on all the makeup.”
