Brad Lynch, Chicago-based architect of houses, apartments and museums
Architect Brad Lynch has specialized in clean modern designs for everything from single-family homes and high-rise condominiums to the Racine Museum of Art in Wisconsin.
“When he worked for you, Brad understood the results of where things were going,” said Richard Lazar, a friend who was also a client in the late 1990s when Lynch oversaw a major expansion of Lazar’s home in Roscoe Village. “It was a fantastic experience working with him and he really knew what the end result was going to be.”
Lynch, 64, died of complications from a brain hemorrhage Sept. 26 at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, his daughter Annie said. He lived in Bucktown.
Lynch grew up in Racine, where he took art classes at the Charles A. Woostum Museum of Fine Arts as a child. Later he became interested in photography.
Lynch studied art, art history, engineering, and landscape architecture at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, where, after graduation, he served as construction and project manager for the restoration of Herbert and Catherine Jacobs’ first home in Madison, an early example of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian Houses.
He interned at several Chicago architecture firms before teaming up with David Brininstool to form Brininstool + Lynch in 1989.
Lynch’s output has included commercial projects such as high-rise buildings, both new and renovated single-family homes, corporate headquarters, movie theaters and master plans. The firm has won more than 50 major design awards.
“Brad had a voracious appetite not just for food and drink, but for people, places and ideas,” Bryninstuhl said. “He was naturally curious and always pushed the boundaries. It formed the basis of his creative activity.”
One of the projects Lynch was most proud of was designing the Racine Art Museum, which occupied a converted bank building. The project, which was completed in 2003, was described by then-Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin as a “quiet, inviting, if occasionally chilly, showcase for contemporary craftsmanship” that provides “an innovative use of structure and materials and an opportunity to address functional concerns and provide these decisions are an artistic expression.”
Lynch’s daughter said the opportunity to develop the project was “incredibly meaningful” to her father.
“He took great pride in bringing what was important to him to the city that raised him,” she said.
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Lynch also designed a gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago and apartment buildings at 1620 S. Michigan Ave. in the South Loop, 550 N. St. Clair St. in Streeterville, 1345 S. Wabash Ave. in the South Loop and Platinum Tower at 700 W. Van Buren St. in the West Loop.
Lynch has frequently worked on civic and community initiatives, including helping plan the new transportation hub and master plan for Chicago’s Chinatown district, helping plan the West Side Corridor in Chicago, and working with actor Brad Pitt on community sustainability in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
Lynch has written and lectured frequently at more than 20 universities, including the Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture and the Taliesin School of Architecture in Arizona. He recently moved into a house in Bucktown that was one of his most written about projects, known as the Wood House. He designed Wood House for a client in 2013.
The marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her daughter, Lynch is survived by her son, Blake; sister, Karin; and brother Brian.
Services were held.
Goldsboro is a freelance reporter.
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