This article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times on February 25, 2005

Book frames modern homes since 1978

David Hovey, president of Optima Inc., has written a book about his modernist designs.

By Bill Cunniff
Real Estate Reporter

Modernist David Hovey will discuss his new book, The Nature of Dwellings, The Architecture of David Hovey (Rizzoli International Publications), on Monday at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

The free lecture will be at 6 p.m at Crown Hall, 3360 S. State.

The 200-page book features about 250 color photographs. Single-family homes in Winnetka, Homewood and Glencoe are presented. Hovey-designed homes in Scottsdale, Ariz., are pictured and discussed as well.

Hovey, a native of New Zealand, moved to the United States at the age of 15. He received his architectural training at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and he currently is an associate professor of architecture at IIT.

A Winnetka home in the book sits on a 60-foot bluff overlooking Lake Michigan. The structural frame was prefabricated in three weeks. It took two days to erect the frame with a large crane. The span of the house is 35 feet—which corresponds to the maximum length of an object that a flatbed truck can carry on an interstate highway.

"In siting the house, I wanted to focus on the lake, but also to set it back so that the view from within was filtered through trees," Hovey said. "I envisioned the decks as bold floating planes, distinctively different in shape from each and the house."

In 1978, Hovey founded Optima Inc., a builder of town houses and condominiums. In those days, interest rates were climbing toward 20 percent.

The book's final chapter notes Optima's developments. The first one was a complex of six town houses in Hyde Park.

"As a young architect, I wanted to control the whole building process—buy the land, design and construct the buildings and market and manage them," Hovey said.

Optima Inc. currently is building Optima Old Orchard Woods, a condominium development in Skokie.

The Nature of Dwellings, The Architecture of David Hovey . The book is available at www.amazon.com.

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