When deer pass by the glass living room wall of this Riverwoods home, “we wonder who’s looking at whom, them or us,” says Diana Katsiaras.
With her husband, Alex Fick, Katsiaras bought the steel, glass and brick house on Woodland Lane in 2008, drawn, she says, by “its simplicity in the natural surroundings. It’s magical.” They have made changes over the years, largely to enhance the feeling that the house and setting blend together.
The couple quote Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: “We should attempt to bring nature, houses and human beings together in a higher unity.” It’s relevant to this house in particular, which was designed by one of Mies’ students at Illinois Institute of Technology, Philip Thrane, who was part of Mies’ team making drawings for an architecture exhibit at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial in Brazil in 1959.
Thrane’s design for the house “is purely Miesian,” says Fick, “and so serene.”
Now retired—she was in IT and he in the dairy industry— and done with Chicago winters, the couple plan to move to Arizona. They’re putting the house, three bedrooms and about 2,400 square feet on 1.25 acres, on the market this week.
Listed with Honore Frumentino of @properties Christie’s International Real Estate, the home is priced at a little under $1.1 million.
