Most basements are finished last and designed least. They collect a sofa that no longer fits upstairs, a television and a treadmill. Yet in a family home the lower level is often where evenings are spent, especially through a long Chicago winter when the garden is under snow and daylight ends early. Marian Vist treated this floor as a destination with its own character, darker and more intimate than the bright ground floor. Walking down the stairs should feel like a change of scene, the way stepping into a small theater does. Steen Eiler Rasmussen, in "Experiencing Architecture," notes that we read a room through contrast as much as through its own qualities. A deliberately low-lit lower level makes the whole house feel richer, because it gives the family two moods instead of one.