CITTA means "city" in Italian, and it has been in the city that development team CITTA has focused the majority of its developments over the last twenty-seven years.
CITTA design, through its in-house architectural staff, based in a modern architectural vocabulary, is an architecture of shapes and geometry with sensitivity to clean, open, loft-type statements of spaces filled with light, shadow and form. Most of the developments are residential and work within a specific modernist design vocabulary of a neutral charcoal, gray/white and off-white color palette, which includes detailing that has been used and refined over a history of successive projects, each building on the previous design.
Beginning in 1977, in the area of Halsted and Armitage in Chicago, with a number of smaller developments, by 1980 the architectural and development team moved to River North to do the first “permitted” lofts in the city of Chicago, at 449 and 501 North Wells, called the Loftworks . Shortly thereafter, a project called Huron Street Lofts was developed, as well as Butler Lofts at 520 West Erie. After lofts began to become an accepted residential living style, and as prices for existing warehouses quickly rose in the River North, the next focus for development became an area west of the Chicago River, north of Grand Avenue, and south of Chicago Avenue, soon to be called River West.
Beginning in 1980 with the Shultz Piano Lofts at 711 North Milwaukee, CITTA has developed a library of projects ranging from single-family homes to multi-unit residential developments of over 160 units in the River West area. Townhomes along Peoria Street, called River West Courts 1 and 2, at 660 and 678 North Peoria, as well as additional townhomes called River West Courts 3 at 665 North Sangamon, exemplify the modernist design approach, architectural style, detail and character of the CITTA development team.
Single-family properties such as the Arlechino at 837 North Elizabeth and the Mini-Montreux at 1045 West Huron express the design vocabulary for the single-family architectural statements. The Vivero at 939 West Huron and the Montevero at 943 West Huron are from-the-ground-up condominiums and townhomes; while, along the Kennedy Expressway are the modern gray condominium " twin sisters" called Montreux (1035 West Huron) and Moderno (950 West Erie) which express the evolving architectural philosophy for multi-story/multi-unit designs of an architecture of unique form and modernist expression. Centered as the foci of the River West developments, at 925 West Huron, and the initial inspiration for development in the area, was the rehabilitation of the J.P. Smith Shoe Company, a large, seven-story, 180,000 square foot historic landmark, which was converted in 1987 into a 160-unit apartment complex, with 11,000 square feet of office space, called River West Lofts.
The
will be the next step in the modernist philosophy of CITTA. Unlike most developments, CITTA over the past ten years, has attempted to build a specific area within a consistent design genre in which a modernist architectural expression is the prime consideration, for as is the reality, after the development is completed, the developer has usually moved on, and the purchasers have moved in, the property will have a life of its own and will express the philosophy of the architect, the people who purchased, and the development team that created it.Interesting as well is the fact that the principles of CITTA have not only created and built these previously outlined properties in River West, but have lived in the neighborhood of the River West over the twenty-seven years that the various developments have been developed.
