Michigan Avenue - Niche Media - Michigan Avenue magazine is a luxury lifestyle magazine centered around Chicago’s finest people, events, fashion, health & beauty, fine dining & more!
Issue link: http://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/732891
PhotograPhy Courtesy of ICon Modern (toP left and rIght); by bryon landerMan (levy); toM harrIs (bottoM rIght) clockwise from top left: For media agency Centro's Chicago headquarters, Icon Modern shaped custom tables of reclaimed urban walnut to fit the curve of the walls; company co-owner Rocky Levy; a hand-made buckthorn twig table; draped steel cabanas created for Centro to use as break-out meeting spaces. "There's a voracious appetite for twigs [in the design world]" says Rocky Levy, who currently has a hunger for the invasive species buckthorn. "Park districts, forest preserves… Everybody tries to cut this shrub out, and usually it's stacked and burned," the Deerfield native observes. This is where Icon Modern—Levy's decade-old custom sustainable manufac- turing company—comes in, salvaging and crafting the twigs into coffee tables for clients like Google and Coyote Logistics. From Icon Modern's newly expanded location in the West Loop (which recently debuted a 10,000-square-foot showroom), Levy and co-owner Aaron Tvrdy bring to life an inspired collection of custom projects that are natural beauties to the nth degree: a slab table crafted from one large slice of a tree; a coffee table boasting a topographic map of Lake Michigan ("That one's not for the faint of heart," Levy chuckles); and Goose Island Green Line tap handles made from Chicago trees being destroyed by the emerald ash borer. "There's this incredible opportunity to reuse things that otherwise would be wasted," says Levy, a Highland Park resident who sources throughout Chicago and its surrounding suburbs and into Southern Wisconsin and Southern Michigan. After all, says Levy, "Everything has a story." 346 N. Justine St., #100, 312-469-0788; iconmodern.com . Through Icon Modern, Roc Levy crafTs a naTural narraTIve wITh one-of-a-kInd, eco-chIc pIeces. By Meg Mathis sustainable style 128 michiganavemag.com Space chic ago-made