Case study
Chicago Jewish Funerals
A space that balances taste with comfort — uplifting, and in harmony with the sanctity of the architecture.
Fifteen thousand square feet of Israeli stone and daylight, and furniture chosen — and where necessary drawn — to disappear into the room.
The challenge
Designing furniture for a modern funeral home is not a common project. There is no reference set, and the ordinary tests of a good interior — does it impress, does it energize, does it photograph well — are the wrong tests.
The building set the bar we had to work under. Fifteen thousand square feet, a skylit double-height lobby, daylight brought in high through glass block, and stone brought in from Israel that puts you in mind of the Western Wall. The interiors were the architect’s, and the approach behind them was David Jacobson’s vision — the building has been recognized across the industry for it.
Our job was everything that would be placed inside them, which in a building of this kind means the furniture is either invisible or it is a problem.
What we selected, and what we drew
We furnished the building throughout. Much of what is in it is standard product — the lobby and family room seating, the wood chapel chairs — chosen for the rooms and then specified in fabrics we selected.
Where the right thing did not exist, we drew it. The rolling pedestals that carry the caskets were designed rather than bought — in Jeff Meltzer’s words, “to maintain the quiet elegance of the simplicity.” The guest-book credenzas were customized the same way.
The lines of the architecture are clean and spare, and everything placed in the building had to be the same or it would have broken the room. Most of that is a selection problem. A casket pedestal is not — there is no catalog page for one that would have sat comfortably here.
Working with the owners
The work was done with the architect and with the owners — David Jacobson and his wife Iris.
Iris is an artist. The colors running through the upholstery came from her. That is not a courtesy credit: a palette is the one decision in a project like this that cannot be arrived at by process, and hers is a large part of why a building of stone and daylight reads as full of life rather than cold.
Working with Jeff Meltzer and Applied Ergonomics has been a great experience. Jeff took on our project knowing it would be a challenge. Designing furniture for a modern funeral home is not a common project. Jeff and his team were wonderful. Jeff created a space that balances taste with comfort — a space that is uplifting and in harmony with the sanctity of the architecture. As it relates to customer service, that also was responsive and helpful. I 100% recommend Jeff Meltzer and his team.
The guest books
People attending a funeral sign a guest book, so that afterwards the family knows who came. It is common across faiths, and it is one of the few things in the building that every single visitor does.
The sign-in credenzas and podiums stand in the lobby, and both were made to our specifications — the credenzas with angle-adjustable tops. It is the sort of change that costs almost nothing at specification time and is impossible to retrofit later.
The two chapels
There are two chapels. One seats 250; the other is deliberately more intimate, for the services that do not fill a large room and should not feel as though they failed to.
At the front of each are sofas for the family. Everyone else is on a chair; the family is not, and they are placed where they can be seen to be the family. The seating is otherwise uniform, in a warm red on light frames, which is what allows several hundred chairs to fill a room without weighing it down.
Walk through it
Chicago Jewish Funerals maintains a Google interior tour of the Skokie building. It is the closest thing to walking the rooms in order, which the photographs on this page cannot show.
Rooms for the family
Each family room is a small private apartment: a sofa, soft chairs, a kitchenette, a door that closes. Warm wall color rather than institutional white.
These are the smallest rooms in the building and they carry the most weight. The smaller one adjoins the north chapel, and it is where the family gathers before the service while the guests are arriving.
Fifteen years on
The Chicago Tribune photographed this building on 4 August 2011. Every image on this page is from that shoot. Fifteen years of continuous public use later, it still looks new.
The only work it has needed from us since is reupholstery on selected pieces. A beautifully designed space is meaningless if it falls apart under real-world use, and this is the project we point to when we say that.
For fifteen years the Skokie chapel has been a cornerstone of the Chicago Jewish community.
There are other Jewish funeral homes — Chicago Jewish Funerals has its own second location in Buffalo Grove. But in general you hear that a memorial service is at a synagogue, or that it is here.
My own parents were both memorialized in this building. Almost everyone I know has been touched by it.
The quiet dignity of the space is uplifting and reverential. It is full of light, and life. It does not draw attention away from the people who came to grieve and to pay tribute — and at the same time it elevates the experience.
Very few people know that we were instrumental in the building. And very few people in the local Jewish community have not been inside it, and been moved by it.
Interiors: the project architect, to David Jacobson’s vision.
Furniture: furnished throughout by Applied Ergonomics — standard lines selected and specified by us, and the rolling casket pedestals and guest-book credenzas designed by us.
Color direction for the upholstery: Iris Jacobson
Virtual tour: Google interior tour, hosted by Chicago Jewish Funerals.
Photography: Chicago Tribune, 4 August 2011. Chicago Jewish Funerals holds usage rights.
These are 2011 web-resolution files; a high-resolution reshoot is planned. One item to confirm: whether the frames the shoot labeled “large chapel” are the north chapel or the south.
Specified on this project
Applied Ergonomics Rolling casket pedestals · Arc-Com · Beaufurn · HBF Family sofas, Lobby furniture · HBF Textiles · Keilhauer
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