The Silver Room, a clothing and accessories retail empire that Eric Williams groomed from its early days as a mom-and-pop shop in Wicker Park to a hype den in Hyde Park, continues to take experimental turns. The latest is the Silver Room Design Lab, a pop-up that will be open indefinitely in the 900 North Michigan Shops on the Mag Mile. “I’m doing more fashion and avant-garde stuff in this location,” says Williams, who stocks the red-splayed boutique with wares from little-known designers like Copenhagen’s Henrik Vibskov, along with local luminaires like Nick Cave and Carlos Rolón. Williams also plans to have DJs on hand and host special events. After ruminating on ways to bring community together within the mall landscape, he partnered with the architecture firm Gensler on the space: “I’ve learned that small projects bring the biggest changes in cities.”