Where you live is, for better or for worse, an expression of who you are. Some people, though, are better at expressing themselves through design than others. The new traveling exhibit “Everyone’s a Designer/Everyone’s Design,” which has its opening reception tonight, celebrates five especially distinctive Chicago homes.
Tim Heppner, who was trained as both a carpenter and environmental scientist, renovated his house in South Chicago, originally built in 1875, to be a net-positive energy home. “He’s grown all the food he needed for a year, he collects water and sends it back into the wetland, he’s situated the house so it uses no purchased energy to function, whether it’s heating or water,” says Brier. “It works.”
During each stop of the “Everyone’s a Designer/Everyone’s Design” tour, there will be a storytelling session hosted by Chicago’s city historian Tim Samuelson and designers Tim Parsons and Jessica Charlesworth during which visitors will be invited to bring in objects from their own homes and tell stories about them.
