His very creative "tweaking" produced their condominium as part of the Thin Flats complex, designed by McDonald for a parcel of blighted industrial land near a former meatpacking plant.
The front facade of the couple's two-story, 1,900-square-foot unit is a mosaiclike grid of narrow glass panes and wood-composite panels. Their bedrooms are set into the lower floor.
(An identical unit is located below McDonald and Kinder's, with the bedrooms and living areas reversed, so a neighbor's party disturbs no one's sleep.)
As in a traditional rowhouse, the home receives light from the front window of the living area and the rear bedroom window. But there's no sense of being in a tunnel here. That's because the unit is illuminated from above, courtesy of a skylight in the hall that floods the center space with light.
Opaque glass walls in the bathroom also allow light to pass through.
"The kitchen-bathroom core works as a 'lantern,' with laminated-glass walls sending light to the hallway," McDonald says.
In the main living area, with its painted green walls, the couple's children, ranging in age from 4 to 1, jump and play and just seem to enjoy the space, which stretches from a large kitchen with counter and stools through a dining area and beyond.
One recent morning, as Kinder comforted 3-year-old Steele, who was lying on the couch what with seemed to be flu symptoms, McDonald made coffee for guests at the other end of the living/dining/kitchen continuum. Sound from the two conversations didn't seem to collide within the space's 23-foot length.
Would you call this a great room?
"No, that is too suburban," McDonald says. "It is just a living room, dining area, kitchen."
