120-year-old Design North facility in Racine gets a hip new look
Barns. Hip. The two words seem rather incongruous. But for a graphic design and branding firm that hosts corporate clients from the coasts at its headquarters – which is housed in a 19th-Century barn – a remodeling job that screamed 21st century seemed essential.
Design North had been housed in its bucolic structure at 8007 Douglas Ave., Racine, since 1965 and has repeatedly remodeled the facility over the years. One major undertaking was the 1985 uprooting and moving of outbuildings and attaching them to the barn. The resulting 4,000 square feet of space now accommodates the firm’s 30 employees.
But running an information-age business in Victorian-age building has thrown the firm a few curves, according to Design North Principal Lee Sucharda Jr.
"When we went back to the first building, there were these cement walls three feet thick," Sucharda said. "Bringing technology into a 19th-century building is a challenge."
For that effort – the fourth renovation of the building since 1985 – Sucharda retained Building Services Inc. (BSI) of Milwaukee. The design process, which lasted for a year and six months, culminated in a concept the designers say calls attention to the high vertical space presented by the barn.
A focal point of the interior is a spire of wood almost 19 feet high with the new Design North logo.
"When you walk in, there is a slate half-wall about four feet tall," Chris Schroeder, BSI designer, said. "On top of that there is a tower of cherry 15 feet high to bring in the verticalness of the space. The logo and imagery will be placed on that 19-foot wall. We call it the Monolith."
Schroeder said the rustic nature of the building with its rough-hewn log construction was something the team wanted to accentuate rather than disguise.
"What we wanted to do was not hide what it was," Schroeder said. "We wanted to show that this was a heavy timber structure. They (the timbers) were stained and discolored over the years, and we couldn’t sandblast them because the wood underneath was not attractive enough. We used a faux finishing – making the surface look like natural wood."
The ancient building presented some non-aesthetic problems as well, according to Schroeder.
"The main conference room was actually the old chicken coop," Schroeder said.
"Right there, we had a lot of existing conditions that we had to work with to make it successful. It was built so long ago as a farm – there are more appropriate codes that have passed in the last 20 years. Some of the structure was not strong enough to meet current code."
March 29, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee
