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CROWN HALL (1956) " Less is more " S.R. Crown Hall Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe was born in Aachen, Germany in 1886. Growing up, he was brought into his father's stone carving business and eventually started to work at local design firms. Exploring other firms and practices, he eventually crossed paths with greats like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius. After World War I, he fled to the United States and began practicing his architecture in a different tone. Mies originally was interested in Traditionalism and ornament. His early projects conveyed historical styles and classic facades, but his shift in interest then steered him towards a more modernist approach. Eventually, Mies started to get recognition for his work and was involved in projects like the Barcelona Pavilion which was a part of the Weissenhofsiedlung, Bauhaus, IIT Masterplan and more. The project that really started to showcase Mies' understanding of structure and grid was S.R. Crown Hall, a facil...

Emilia Kightley-Sutter After Armour Institute and Lewis Institute merged in 1940, Mies van der Rohe was commissioned to create the new master plan for the future Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Chicago. This master plan was a very large job for Mies, so large he developed the plan for 20 years. This plot of land holds 20 of Mies’ work, making it the biggest concentration of his work in the world. One of these works featured on the campus is the famous Crown Hall which is home to the Illinois Institute of Technology’s college of architecture. Mies’ master plan was formally based on a 24’ by 24’ grid by which he used to determine where building columns would be located, in other words the grid was the structural module. After figuring out the dimensions and square footage of the spaces needed for the campus such as room sizes, drafting rooms, laboratories, and classrooms, the grid length and width was set. This master plan was approached in an unusual way, furniture suc...