ARCH162

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...

 S.R. Crown Hall,  Ludwig Mies van der Rohe , (Chicago, Illinois); 1950 - 1956; Other Fathers: Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (or Mies, as he was known) already had a distinguished career before emigrating to the United States in 1937. When he accepted an appointment to head IIT’s College of Architecture (at the time the Armour Institute of Technology) he also agreed to design a master plan for the school’s campus. Mies sought to create a style that reflected the mechanical spirit of the age, and this drive permeated both the curriculum and the buildings he created at IIT. The Building The two-level building is configured as a pure rectangular form, 220 ft. by 120 ft. by 18 ft. tall. The enclosed space is column free with four six ft. steel plate girders welded to eight H-columns. These girders suspend the roof in a single plane to form a primary structure.  While the low...