Chicagoan Nate Chung’s Bucktown loft was previously a calculator factory. It fits: Chung, an artist and restaurateur originally from Hawaii, is a self-identified problem solver. An enterprising spirit ties his professional activities to his personal ones, and has been a characteristic Chung relied on as he made the apartment his own.
Deciding to strike out on his own after living with roommates for a number of years, Chung embarked on a two-month search that brought him to a bright, open space with 13-foot ceilings. He knew this one had to be his.
“I just felt like this is going to be home,” says Chung. “I love how it has this contrast, this previous history of industry.”
The space, with its neutral backdrop, sports the air of an artist’s workspace or studio, offering its new inhabitant a clean slate. Chung could envision multiple layouts, artwork on the walls, and a shifting constellation of his things. And, as a prolific entertainer, he saw immediately that the open spaces would contract and expand to fit the size of any gathering he hosted on a given night.
This laser focus is innate to Chung. After obtaining an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and working in arts-based community development in the city, he found himself at a dinner party nine years ago where he would meet his future business partners, Edward Kim, Jenny Kim, and Vicki Kim. He started working for them in any capacity he could while they built their first restaurant, Ruxbin (now closed), from drywall to plumbing. Eventually, they went into restaurants together, opening Mott Street and Mini Mott, with another on the way.
“The food stuff is taking off, but, at the same time, I can’t help but be an artist,” says Chung. “I can’t help but approach things spatially. That’s just how my mind thinks.”
He’s brought this thinking into his loft, often consulting theoretical research on architecture, studying the body language of his guests, reading texts on interiors, and adjusting arrangements along the way.
For Chung, his home is both a place to recharge and to host, so his process for furnishing it needed to be appropriately flexible. But, first, he had to make a decision about the floors.
“When I first came into this space, I’m like, ‘Oh my goodness, I need to change this,’” he says of the honey-orange flooring. He ultimately decided to work with the color instead of giving it the ax, and incorporated darker elements to offset the warm tones, like his dining table and chairs. The ductwork throughout the apartment was dark brown, painted by a previous owner, so he painted it white to make it all but disappear. Additionally, there were brick walls with a faintly pink hue; Chung hoped to cool down, too, with a plush yet neutral palette of grays, blues, and blacks. Pops of color come from artwork and plants.
A rainforest’s worth of plants sprout in the dining area: a sea of palms, rubber plants, and more across various surfaces, including a custom wall-length shelving unit Chung installed with a friend when he first moved in. In Chicago’s winter climate, “there’s zero humidity,” Chung laments. “[With the plants], I get my motifs of being back in Hawaii, and they provide humidity.”
In the living room, two of Chung’s favorite chairs—black Christian Liaigre for Holly Hunt lounge chairs that he found on Craigslist—mingle with other sofas and tables that sport clean, sharp edges. “I’m very much drawn to certain shapes—like rectangles—and textures,” Chung muses. “I think about flow—the same way as in a restaurant, certain spaces just feel better than others. And why is that? I’m always curious about the architecture of that.”
Chung’s style means things don’t often stay put once they’ve been placed. It’s a constantly changing installation, he says, because he’s always thinking about how humans connect with the surroundings in which they find themselves—and each other. The living room has become an experimental space for him to study interaction; he regularly rearranges the room to see where people will sit or how comfortable they are.
“I’ll study their body language and [think], ‘Next time I’m gonna move this chair five inches over this way because I notice that when people sit on [the sofas], they’re yelling at each other,” he says. “I’ll think, ‘We need something in between.’” He equates this mode of thinking with his own art practice, in which he’s always considering how colors or textures might speak to someone, or how someone might respond to them.
Even getting people to move into the living room was a whole production, as most guests congregated around the kitchen island when he began to use the space for get-togethers.
“It took me two years to get people to be comfortable to jump into the living room,” he says. “I have all of these soft surfaces that I personally love to chill on when I’m home alone. I’ll listen to music on a couch, I’ll dance on the coffee table, even by myself. [So] why can’t I get my guests to join me in that?”
He read up on architecture and arrangement, and every month was making “seismic changes” to the living room, moving things into the middle of the room, to the corner, all around. He consulted one of his favorite books, Pattern Language, time and time again. Eventually, it clicked with people, allowing him to entertain the way he wanted.
For Chung, his loft is as much an oasis as a place from which he draws energy, whether alone or with others, eating or dancing. “I’m always ready to host,” he says. “The joy of the possibility [of impromptu gatherings] and that I’m able to do it on the fly... it gives me so much pleasure and so much life.”