Becovic

The challenge

Becovic is a residential real estate company in Rogers Park. They had 2,600 square feet of raw commercial space on Howard Street and two jobs for it to do at once: a leasing hub where prospective residents sign, and a community center the neighborhood would actually use.

Those two rooms want opposite things. A leasing office wants privacy, focus and a place to sign a document. A community space wants to feel open and unbooked. Fitting both into one storefront was the whole problem.

Before and after

Applied Ergonomics took the space from this to this — construction and interiors both.

The solution

Rather than partition the floor, we zoned it. Bar-height community seating and soft lounge groups occupy the front, near the daylight and the street. Workstations run along one wall under a full-width aerial photograph. A glass-fronted conference room holds the one function that genuinely needs a door.

The structure was left exposed — deck, ductwork and conduit painted out — and the slab polished, so the room reads as generous rather than finished-over. Warmth comes back through brick, wood tops and rust-toned upholstery.

Acoustics as the graphic

A hard-surfaced room — concrete floor, exposed deck, glass — is a loud room. The blue panels are the acoustic treatment, and they are also the only large-scale graphic in the space.

Solving two problems with one element is usually the right move in a small footprint. Here it also meant the brand color arrived as architecture rather than as signage.

The kitchen and the mark

The kitchen anchors the community end: brick, dark stone, and the Becovic monogram backlit above the counter. It is the one place in the plan where the company signs its name, and it does so over the part of the space that belongs to the neighborhood rather than to the business.

The neighborhoods, 28 feet wide

The largest single element in the space is a 28′ × 5′ aerial photograph of the neighborhoods Becovic calls home. It was our idea. We commissioned the aerial shoot and had the print produced, and it runs the full length of the workstation wall.

It does the same job here that the plant and fleet photographs do for Builders Asphalt: rather than decorating the walls with something bought to fit, the company’s own subject becomes the artwork. For a residential real estate business whose entire value is local knowledge, a picture of the actual blocks they operate on says more than any abstract would.

It also solves a practical problem. A 28-foot wall in a room with exposed structure and polished concrete needs something at its own scale, and there is very little on the market at that size that is not either wallpaper or a compromise.

The work half

Workstations run along the far wall beneath the aerial, and continue past the conference room on a long panel run. They are screened just enough for focus without closing the room off — panels high enough to give each person a wall, low enough that the space still reads as one volume from the front door.

Orange and grey tiles alternate down the run, picking up the warm end of the palette that the blue panels sit against. Counter-height seating faces it across the aisle, so the same strip of floor works for heads-down work on one side and a quick conversation on the other.

The conference room is glazed on two sides for the same reason the panels are low: it reads as part of the space until someone shuts the door. Inside, a butcher-block top and dark seating against a blue panel.

Design and build

This was a full scope for us: construction and interiors together. Demolition and build-out through finishes, then furniture, lighting, signage and installation — one team, one point of accountability.

It is also the one project in our portfolio where we own the complete before-and-after record, from the empty shell through the finished room. That is why it is here.

Location: 1531 W Howard Street, Chicago

Scope: design-build — construction, interior design, furniture, art and signage

Manufacturer and trade credits to be confirmed before publication.