Designer / Artist / Educator
Rebecca Midden is a Chicago-based designer, artist, and educator whose work explores the relationship between our physical surroundings and our inner experience of place.
Driven by a lifelong fascination with beauty, her practice spans interior architecture, environmental installations, and investigations of domestic space. Through light, material, scale, time, and other sensory conditions, she explores interiority…the elusive, often emotional experience of being within and relating to a place.
01 / Interiors
Catalpa Residence — Chicago
Case Study 2026
Residential interiors informed by more than two decades of design practice, with an emphasis on materiality, spatial experience, and the relationship between people and place.
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02/ Installation
Bloom’s Embrace — Oakwoods Nature Preserve Findlay, OH
2024- Ongoing
A series of site-responsive installations exploring interiority, material transformation, and our emotional relationships with space.
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03/ Research
Coach House Archives — Chicago
2022- Ongoing
An ongoing investigation of an 1896 Chicago coach house, documenting its material history, accumulated alterations, and possibilities for adaptation.
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04/ Teaching and Public Programs
Permission To… Permission Too.
Permission To… Permission Too. was an exhibition and public program developed in partnership with the Chicago Architecture Biennial and presented at Columbia College Chicago. Co-curated and designed with Rene King, the project brought together student proposals addressing housing, migration, ecology, material culture, and civic participation. The storefront installation served as a setting for exhibition, discussion, and public programming.
SELECTED WORK
Selected projects from more than two decades of professional practice across workplace, commercial, hospitality, and residential interiors.
Kildeer Residence 2022
RSM’s 150,000-square-foot Chicago headquarters brings together spaces for individual work, collaboration, client engagement, and employee gathering within a cohesive workplace environment. Lead Designer: Rebecca Midden | IA Interior Architects
Located within a 1919 Beaux-Arts bank, Humana’s Louisville workplace introduces contemporary rooms, furnishings, and work settings while retaining the character and scale of the historic interior. A layered planning strategy supports focused work, meetings, and informal gathering within the existing architecture. Lead Designer: Rebecca Midden | IA Interior Architects
