RANDY HELLER begins every design project by asking the client to select a favorite object they feel they can’t live without. “I then work the entire project around that single thing,” says Heller from her home in Highland Park, Illinois, a bucolic lakefront suburb north of Chicago. “I did that with my own home and also with my separate design studio. When you start with something you love, it’s possible to have it become ‘best friends’ with any other objects you put in a room.”
