Case Study · 79 W. Monroe · Chicago

R2 Companies and Ware Malcomb were converting a 1905 beaux-arts office tower in Chicago's Loop into 117 residences, 41 of them affordable, as the first project delivered under the city's LaSalle Street Reimagined framework. The visualization work had to carry a lot of weight. It needed to speak to prospective residents deciding whether to lease, to civic stakeholders backing the downtown housing initiative, and to the historic review process that comes with any landmark office to residential conversion. All of that had to land before the amenity floor or a single model unit physically existed.

We built the resident lounge, the fitness center, and a representative two bedroom home inside one shared 3D environment, so materials, sightlines, and daylight stayed consistent from view to view. The lounge renderings frame the original skylights above the billiards, dining, and seating areas. The fitness center visualizations show the wood slat ceiling and courtyard glazing that connect the new amenity floor to the building's historic bones. The residence sets a muted navy and ivory palette with warm wood and bronze accents against downtown Chicago city view glazing, so a prospective buyer can read the finished home well before build out.

Ware Malcomb and R2 Companies came away with one coordinated set of Chicago office to residential conversion renderings that carries across every audience the project needs to reach: leasing collateral for future residents, civic communications tied to the LaSalle Street Reimagined initiative, and the preservation narrative in front of the Historic Review Board. The imagery holds the project's neoclassical and nautical character while giving future residents an inhabitable sense of the finished lounge, fitness floor, and homes.

79 W. Monroe is part of our multifamily rendering work — including office-to-residential conversions.