Firm News - Studio21 Architects

11/6/2025

Welcome, Erica!

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Welcome to the Studio, Erica!

Now, we haven’t done a “Welcome to the Studio” article in a little while, so allow me to set the stage. Within the office, this article is simultaneously a rite of passage as it is the bane of the subject’s existence. The articles themselves likely aren’t the source of the headache—that probably is due to the badgering done by yours truly. I retain the belief that a bit of badgering is necessary, if it means we get to turn the spotlight on our wonderful, talented members of the Studio21 Architects staff!

As the year slowly winds to a close, our newest team member is not necessarily “new” anymore, having started in the role in June, but delay aside, please join us with all of the appropriate fanfare to welcome our new Office Manager: Erica!

Erica joins the Studio21 Architects team as the Office Manager, a role that wears many hats and, in many ways, functions as the glue of the office. In this role, Erica is not just the friendly face at the front desk or the voice on the phone; she handles the financial aspects of the business, like paying and sending invoices, and keeps in the know on the progress of each of the current projects we have underway. As the Office Manager, a large part of her role involved the administrative side of Design+Build. She manages contractor statements, assists in getting bids from our subcontractors, and ensures a smooth process from the administrative point of view. And it doesn’t end there! Proving herself to be happy to dive right in, Erica has also begun training on the ins and outs of Woodharbor Cabinetry, so that she can be a helping hand for our clients as they create their dream homes (which must include their dream cabinets!).

The workings of our office are not all that new to Erica, as she comes to Studio21 Architects after working at her family’s HVAC business for over twenty years. Having experience in the industry has allowed her to jump into this role full steam ahead. Outside of the office, Erica stays involved in her daughter’s extracurriculars, as well as volunteering with local animal rescues.

In these past few months, Erica has quickly become an integral part of our team, and we’re excited to see her grow as Office Manager and the benefits she will surely bring our business. So, if you haven’t already, please give Erica a resounding “Welcome to the Studio”!!

By: Emma H.

Emma works as the Marketing Manager for Studio21 Architects. She is the writer behind (almost) all of our newsletter articles, and she works hard to make sure all of our marketing materials reflect an architect-approved design quality!

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11/6/2025

New Frontiers In Visualization

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New Frontiers In Visualization

For as long as there have been buildings, there have been architects. Sure, the mudbrick dwellings of yore didn’t have a set of architectural plans or a building permit; the ancient architects had a very different role than those of 2025. Think about it—the Great Pyramids? There were Egyptian “royal architects” on the pharaoh's staff for dynasties. The Pantheon? Those Roman architects designed a dome that even today is considered the largest (concrete) dome in the world.

Fast forward to today, in a firm in Downers Grove, and the role of an architect looks immensely different in some ways and strangely steadfast in others. Our clients are not rulers of empires, but just as a pharaoh cares about the look of their future tomb, our clients care about their home design suiting their lives, needs, and style. I would go as far as to say that the personalized nature of architecture hasn’t changed nearly as much as one might first assume; care and consideration of who you are designing for is timeless. One of the day and night differences in the field, however, relates to technology. Until recently (comparatively), everything was drawn and drafted by hand and, through the invention of programs like AutoCAD, not only is the burden of time dramatically shortened, but the level of detail available has exponentially grown.

As a homeowner/client, these advancements offer you the advantage of shorter turnaround times on revisions and streamlining the work needed to ensure a safe and structurally sound home. But this is Studio Pages! I would be remiss if I didn’t throw in just a little bit of pizzazz—pizzazz that doesn’t come from discussing construction documents. No technological advancement says pizzazz more than tools for visualizing your design before it’s built. At Studio21 Architects, we employ a handful of tools for the purpose of visualization at every stage and in the Design Phase, these tools become ever more crucial for a couple of reasons: your design must be approved before moving forward, and the classic “blueprints” simply are not the most conducive to a fully-fledged vision.

To the untrained eye, like mine for example, the two-dimensional floor plans that our architects create look like a bunch of lines. Sure, with some extra attention, those lines begin to contextually make sense, and sizes of rooms and spatial relationships begin to appear, but they still feel a bit like those hidden picture stereograms—maybe if I keep looking long enough, that 3D home will appear! Of course, it is a crucial responsibility of our architectural team to explain the plans and help bridge that gap in visualization. A word that we use often here at Studio21 Architects is “translating”, whether that be translating the 2D plans into layperson terms or translating the design into reality through construction. Translation helps a lot, but as they say: a picture is worth a thousand words...and that’s where the renderings come in.

Producing a rendering follows similar steps to how one would paint a picture. First, you must start with a sketch. In the drafting world, that sketch is the aforementioned 2D floorplan, which can be modeled into 3D using software like Revit. That initial iteration—the adding of a dimension, if you will—is what we call a whiteboard rendering. As you can see from our whiteboard example, it is quite a leap from our 2D plans, albeit not perfectly realistic just yet. Whiteboard renderings serve as a way to understand the interplay between light and shadow in a space, just as shading does for a painting.

Whiteboard vs Photorealistic Renderings (same project)

To take a painting to the next level, you would add color! A whiteboard rendering includes your “heavy hitters” like windows and doors (light) and significantly sized objects (volume), but as the name suggests, they are totally monochrome. Adding color to a rendering brings life and mood into the mix and helps to visualize the intention. Do the dark cabinets make the kitchen look smaller? Are the selections we’ve chosen complimenting each other as a whole? Adding color isn’t where it ends; for a painting and a rendering, your final step towards realism is all in the details. Details like artwork, textures, and even small items like tchotchkes can be added into the renderings to make the spaces feel lived in and therefore, more realistic.

For the most current advancements in the realm of renderings—that we employ—your home’s design can now be taken from static images to animate walkthroughs. Similar to the dollhouse feature that has become more common on real estate listings, this dynamic level allows the viewer to move between spaces and look around the modeled home, just as you’d do in real life. Since I cannot print video (as cool as that would be), check out our website for an example of a walkthrough rendering, which you can see by clicking the button below!

See the Walkthrough

Now, I’m not sure how rooted in science the concept of “left versus right-brained" is, but the principle is very applicable here. Visual learners, auditory learners, left-brained, right-brained—each of us is different, and so it stands to reason that each of our minds works differently as well. For our architectural team, the end goal remains the same no matter if you are on one end of the visualization spectrum, the other end, or somewhere in between. The end goal? To offer whatever it is you need to have that “a-ha” moment.

If I could boil down the Studio21 Architects philosophy, two things would remain: instilling confidence and delivering a positive experience. As I see it, you cannot have one without the other; having confidence in your choices, design, and team has a beneficial ripple effect on your overall journey, in turn leading to a positive experience. There are many bits and pieces sprinkled through our process with the main purpose of instilling confidence. For visualizing and, of course, the “a-ha” moment, 3D renderings do that job quite well.

By: Emma H.

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11/6/2025

New Valve, New House, New Me!

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New Valve, New House, New Me!

A Note From Bill

I have shared the details of my forever home journey with you all for over a year now, and I am beyond happy to report that we have moved in and the finished product, with a few minor exceptions, is exactly as I hoped. As it goes with most home construction projects, I can’t reliably tell you when our forever home will actually be “done”—we still have boxes to unpack, details to finish off, and, of course, photos to take and a final episode to film. In my tenure, I have built many houses—a few my own—and this point is one of the best feelings out there. Homeowners go through months of planning, stressing, and daydreaming about it all being finished, and when that moment finally arrives, it feels like the weight of the world is lifted off your shoulders.

In our last issue of Studio Pages, I had mentioned the heart surgery I had coming up, and I would get to really test out the aging-in-place amenities of our home. A few months later, and the surgery was a success; my old heart valve has been replaced with a brand-new bovine valve—technology really is crazy, isn’t it? Every so often, I even get the urge to say MOO!

The procedure itself was far less exciting than taking your car in for a valve replacement, and the recovery was not as arduous as I previously expected, either. By the time I was back home and ready to test-run the grab bars and no-threshold shower, I didn’t even need to use my hospital-issue walker. Don’t get me wrong, I was moving slower and had to be more careful, so the aging-in-place features we added to our home were certainly a convenience. Ultimately, I didn’t get to experience the benefits of our home’s design to their fullest potential, but in my temporarily limited state after surgery, I do feel confident that our home will work wonderfully if it ever becomes necessary.

Watch Design+Build Decoded

With all that said, our move-in date skated pretty close to my surgery date and that, coupled with the recovery time, has unfortunately delayed the unveiling of the final finished home. Unpacking and “making it home” is going slower than I personally prefer, but it has given me a chance to reflect on the journey of designing and building this home, as well as the process of documenting it for this series. I’m sure many of you are patiently waiting for the final walkthrough, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the finale of Design+Build Decoded will be out soon(-ish)!

Thinking back on the thirty-two (and a half) episodes we’ve uploaded, I do hope that our viewers feel more knowledgeable and confident in the journey of building a custom home, at least in some small way. Designing and building a home is a huge undertaking—months or years of work, lots of money spent, never-ending selections, and endless expenditure of emotional energy. When we first sat down to film episode one, the goal was to peel back the curtain on this process so that homeowners going on this journey themselves can feel confident in the steps and the choices to make. I believe we have achieved that goal.

By: Bill Styczynski

Bill Styczynski is the president of Studio21 Architects, as well as an architect in his own right. Every month, Bill writes an article for the Studio Pages newsletter about design topics that he believes will be informative, helpful reads for all of our clients, established and potential.

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STUDIO21 ARCHITECTS NEWS

Welcome, Erica!

Welcome to the Studio, Erica!

By: Emma H.

New Frontiers In Visualization

New Frontiers In Visualization

By: Emma H.

New Valve, New House, New Me!

New Valve, New House, New Me!

A Note From Bill

By: Bill Styczynski

Categories

Archives

get the newsletter:

home about us portfolio services resources firm news contact

5012 fairview avenue, downers grove, il 60515 · (630)789-2513 · [email protected]

STUDIO21 ARCHITECTS NEWS

Welcome, Erica!

Welcome to the Studio, Erica!

By: Emma H.

New Frontiers In Visualization

New Frontiers In Visualization

By: Emma H.

New Valve, New House, New Me!

New Valve, New House, New Me!

A Note From Bill

By: Bill Styczynski

Categories

Archives

get the newsletter:

home about us ﻿portfolio services resources firm news contact

5012 fairview avenue, downers grove, il 60515 · (630)789-2513 · [email protected]

home about us portfolio services resources firm news contact