About the Studio
A small firm
on the North Shore
We've been practicing on the North Shore of Chicago for over three decades. Most of our work still arrives through past clients and the builders we've worked alongside.
We'd rather do a small number of projects properly than a large number quickly.
Lake Effect Architects offers full architectural services for houses and commercial buildings. Three principles shape how we work: a clear design process, a collaborative team approach, and close attention to context, craft and detail. They're set out in full on our design philosophy page.
In practice, a clear process means we put a range of alternatives on the table early, while changing direction is still cheap. Those studies are what sharpen the program and settle your priorities against the budget. You always know which phase you're in and what the next decision costs. Construction throws up surprises regardless, and when it does you hear about it from us early, with options attached.
The collaborative part mostly means we don't pretend to do everything in-house. We work with the same structural engineers, mechanical consultants, landscape architects and interior designers year after year, and we handle the coordination between them so you aren't chasing four separate offices for an answer. The Owner stays in the room for that, not just at the presentations.
Context and craft are harder to put on a fee proposal but they're what you live with. The site and the street get studied before anything gets drawn. Then it's the proportion of a door, where the light lands in the morning, what the floor does when it meets the wall. Those details take a disproportionate share of the drawing time, and they're the reason a building still feels considered ten years on.
We don't have a house style. Much of the work looks for a balance between old and new, and it comes out differently from project to project because the sites and the clients are different.
Robert Dun Douglass, architect.
Rob has run Lake Effect Architects from Lake Bluff since 1996. Before that he spent four years as Vice President of Residential Development and Marketing at Conway Farms in Lake Forest, and before that drew in Chicago for Eifler & Associates, Booth/Hansen & Associates, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and Tigerman, Fugman, McCurry.
Through the early years of the practice he was also Vice President of Rideway Builders in Lake Forest, and from 2008 to 2025 a managing partner of Lake Effect Holdings and Lake Effect Properties. That is an unusual amount of time spent on the development and construction side of the table for someone who draws for a living, and it is most of the reason this office talks about budget in the first meeting rather than the fourth.
He took a Master of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1989, after a Bachelor of Arts at Macalester College, and has been licensed in Illinois since 1992.
Outside the practice he served as President of the Lake Forest & Lake Bluff History Center from 2012 to 2016, and as Commissioner and then President of the Lake Bluff Park District from 2009 to 2019. Thirty years of drawing on the North Shore, and a fair share of the meetings about it.
Five phases, start
to finish
What that looks like
on a project
Alternatives get drawn and priced early, while changing your mind is still cheap. Every phase ends with a set of drawings and a meeting, and you sign off before we move on. The cost of a decision gets raised while it is still a decision rather than a change order.
We've worked with most of our consultants for years. Fewer things fall through the gaps that way, and we can tell you early when something structural or mechanical is going to push back on the design. You're in those conversations, not briefed after them.
Before schematic design we'll have walked the site, looked at what sits either side of it, and checked what the village will permit. Then we draw the details at full size when they matter: window proportions, how trim resolves at a corner, where a stair meets the floor.
Find us
Based in
Lake Bluff, Illinois
We work mainly on the North Shore, from Evanston up through Lake County. It's an area with a long residential architecture tradition and a lot of housing stock worth keeping.
No. 001-014968
available on request